THE ADELTE PENGUIN. 45 



wanting to the runt. Sleepily it stands there with half-shut eyes in a torpor resulting 

 from exhaustion, cold, and hunger, wondering perhaps what all the bustle round it 

 means, a little dirty dishevelled dot, in the race for life a failure, deserted by its parents 

 who have hunted vainly for their own offspring round the nest in which they hatched 

 it, but from which it may by now have wandered half a mile. And so it stands, lost to 

 everything around, till a Skua in its beat drops down beside it, and with a few 

 strong vicious pecks puts an end to the failing life. 



Not once or twice, but a thousand times this happens, and the kindness of 

 Nature's seeming cruelty was borne in upon us as we watched its working. All 

 round the rookery are Skuas' nests with their young ; the conditions of life are hard, 

 and failures must be many where the standard of efficiency is high. Not fifty per 

 cent, of the Skuas themselves survive their infancy ; not thirty jot'r cent, of the 

 Emperor Penguin chicks survive ; and from the corpse-strewn condition of the acres 

 occupied by an Adelie Penguin rookery, where not merely egg shells Ity the score, but 

 mangled chicken remnants by the many hundred, lie to be trodden into frozen dust, 

 and muddy guano, one may guess, I think, with truth, that even in these communities 

 the death-rate is excessive. No one can walk over a mile or two of such a l)reedin2: 

 ground without being astounded by the numljer of the dead around him. lie will 

 notice, moreover, at once that it is not only the youngest of the chickens that die, but 

 that a very large proportion are birds which have already shed their down and have 

 assumed the plumage which enables them to take the water. Why, one wonders, did 

 these birds die on shore ? The parents left them, true, but they were ready to be left, 

 and yet apparently they never dared the water, where alone they could escape starvation. 

 Once again the uncompromising character of Nature's teaching was brought home to 

 us as we realized that death was the one alternative to a creature that refused to learn. 

 Our nearest large rookery of Adelie Penguins was that which was already known 

 at Cape Crozier, a distance of fifty miles by sledge from our winter quarters in 

 McMurdo Sound. This rookery we visited many times, landing there first from the 

 ship on January 22nd, 1902. From the ship also we landed to investigate the rookery 

 at Cape Adare on January 9th, 1902. From the ship again we sighted rookeries on 

 the nortliern slopes of Coulman Island, on the southern slopes of Cape Jones, on the 

 southern shores of Wood Bay, and on Cape Bird. There was also a small rookery 

 within 20 miles of our winter quarters on the headland now called Cape Royds, and it 

 was here that we encamped for a part of the breeding season in January, 1904. Quite a 

 considerable number of sledge journeys were made to the rookery at Cape Crozier, 

 and at the time of the birds' return in the early spring we were encamped there 

 also for a month. Lieutenants Royds and Skelton visited the rookery more than once 

 to deposit records for the ' Morning,' and the observations brought back by them are 

 incorjjorated in the present account 



Now, although it will be seen that we were not quite so happily situated for orni- 

 thological work as we might have wished, and, although in the case of the Ade'lie 



