THE EMPEROR PENGUIN. ^^ 



them were captured. Furthermore, uot one of this age was seen or captured later or 

 in any other region hut the pack ; though of the immature stage of seventeen months, 

 with the brown and weathered coat, and whitish throat, we saw about five examples in 

 all and every one of these was taken a great distance farther south, at the edge of the 

 fast ice, and at the end of summer (in February) when the pack-ice belt had 

 disappeared, throwing Ross Sea open to the southern oceans. 



It appears, therefore, that the various ages have each their own particular range 

 durincr certain seasons, and that whereas the pack ice is regarded as a safe nursery 

 for the youngest birds in summer, the more advanced immature birds, which, at seventeen 

 months, are then on the point of moulting, wander south to find fast ice on which to 

 remain while the process lasts, knowing that in the disintegrating ice-pack they might 

 be forced to take to water when it would be highly inconvenient for theiu to do so. 



Similarly, the adult birds, having finished all their duties to the young now 

 leave them to themselves, and also retire southward in January and February to take up 

 their retreat and moult in safety on fast ice. This accounts for the groups we met m full 

 moult on January 15th, 1902, in the secluded bight known as Lady Newnes Bay ; also 

 for the multitude we saw on the fast ice of King Edward VII.'s Land on January 31st, 

 1902 and for the various examples taken in January, 1903, and m February, 1J04, 

 all in full moult or with the moult but just completed, in McMurdo Sound. 

 „ We have therefore substantiated the following facts: first, that the Emperor 

 Penauin chick remains but four months in the down, a most astonishing fact, if as 

 seems to be case, the King Penguin chick remains in down for uUy ten months 

 (see pp 34, 85); that it then moults to assume the blue-grey plumage with the 

 whitish throat which characterises the birds of five months old to be found m the pack 

 durmg January. This same plumage is to be seen a year later in a brown and faded 

 state, with blackish feathers sprinkling the white throat, and the whole about to be 

 shed, in February, when the bird dons the first adult plumage, and all the characters 

 of the fully adult, though not as yet the richness of colouring that it will assume 



at the next annual moult. i , ^_ • 



One immature bird was brought on board in Lady Newnes Bay, and kept m cap- 

 tivity while it shed its immature and donned its adult plumage. The feathers clmgmg 

 close to one another came off in spurious sheets or handfuls, first from the breast and 

 thighs, and then from the face and tail and flippers, but most irregularly, until at length 

 there was nothing but a rufile or collar of old feathers round the neck {see fag. 15, p. ZA , 

 and figs. 6 and 7, p. 12). This moult took just twenty days from start to finish. 



It has before been stated, as a result of the late Nicolai Hanson s observations 

 in the ' Southern Cross,' that the birds fast while moulting and avoid at all costs 



entering the water. . . -,, 



The young feathers embedded in a mass of fat beneath the skm grow rapidly 

 and push the old ones out, so that often a mere touch will detach a hundred 

 feathers from the bird en masse, giving the false impression that they have come ofi 



