THE KING PENGUIN. 35 



The food of the King Penguin at this rookery consisted mainly of crustaceans, fish 

 and cephalopods, many cuttle-fish beaks being found accompanied l)y pebbles in the 

 stomach. 



The ICing Penguin has methods of progression precisely comparable to those which 

 I have more fully described in the Emperor Penguin. It was, therefore, not always 

 easy to catch the bird before it dropped down on its breast and ruined its plumage by 

 toboganning in the filthy mire ; nor were we ourselves pleasant objects, either to sight 

 or smell, when the chase was over, spattered as we were from head to foot with a 

 most offensive mud. 



There are, as T have said above, certain poirtts in the colouration of the King 

 Penguin which are deserving of very careful consideration. Of tlie colouring of the 

 chicks I will say nothing, since we saw them only in the latest stages ; and of the 

 significant difi"erences between these and the Emperors' chicks I have already spoken in 

 dealing with the latter. But in all the older stages I would call attention to a gradual 

 change in the pigmentation of the feathers of the crown of the head, which can be 

 traced from the first year's immature plumage, through the ordinary adult, right on to 

 the extraordinary plumage of such an aged example as that figured on Plate VIII., 

 fig. 4. This bird was taken on the Snares off the coast of New Zealand. Unhappily 

 the sex is not known, but it is probably an old and exceptionally vigorous male. 



To begin with, in the first immature plumage, which replaces the down at the end 

 of the first year, the crown is distinct from the rest of the black head as a diamond- 

 shaped patch of pearly l:)luish-grey. This is seen to be effected, if one examines the 

 crown feathers closely, liy the terminal third of each feather being pale bluish-grey 

 tipped with a tinge of yellow, while the central third is black, and the basal third 

 is white. If the same crown feathers are examined from the head of a bird in 

 ordinary adult plumage, the arrangement of the pigment in each feather is found 

 to have completely altered. Instead of three bands there are only two, the terminal 

 half being dark brown or black, with a minute amount of orange pigment intermixed, 

 and the basal half white. Associated with this change in the individual feathers 

 is an obvious change in the crown patch, which instead of being grey is now seen 

 to lie black with a greenish gloss, which results from the interminglino- of 

 minute dots of vivid orange pigment with the Ijlack. The same green gloss is to 

 be seen upon the chin and throat, 1)ut at present I concern myself with the crown 

 patch only. 



If then we turn to the Snares example, the significance of these minute 

 changes in the distribution of the pigment begins to explain itself. The green 

 gloss on the crown has become definitely circumscribed by I'ows of feathers with 

 distinctly orange tips, and these I take to be associated with the development of the 

 superciliary golden crests and bands to be found in Catarrhactes and Megadyptes. If 

 the individual feathers of these primitive superciliary bands are examined more closely, 

 the arrangement of the pigment will once more be found to have completely altered. 



