22 



W. P. PYCRAFT. 



Emperor Penguins is the more striking, because the food of the two birds does not 

 appear to dift'er in any conspicuous degree, while externally the two species bear a very 

 close resemblance when adult, though this is not the case with the nestlings (pp. 8-9). 



PIG. 8. — THE INTESTINAL TBACT, MINUS THE DUODENAL LOOP, OF THE YOUNG EMPEBOR PENGUIN. Note the position of 



the yolii sac (y). 



VIII. — Summary. 



Palaeontology has thrown no light on the prol^lem of the ancestry of the penguins, 

 for the oldest known remains, which occur in the earliest tertiaries (Eocene and 

 Miocene) differ from those of living penguins only in very slight particulars. 



It is significant that penguins are, and always have been, confined to the Southern 

 Hemisphere, and that only fossil remains thereof have been found on the South 

 American Continent, New Zealand, and, as a result of the Swedish Antarctic 

 Expedition, in the South Shetlancls ; no less than six new genera having been descril^ed 

 from Seymour Island. 



Our knowledge of fossil penguins dates Ijack to the time when Huxley (8) first 

 described the tarso-metatarsus of a species which he estimated must have stood 4 feet 

 to 5 feet high and named Palseeudirptes antardicit.v ; but there is reason to believe that 

 he under- rather than over-estimated the size. This fragment was from the white 

 Kakanui limestone of Otago. Later, Hector (7) redescrilted this with numerous other 

 bones which had l)een found in this same limestone, exposed at low water in a reef at 

 Woodpecker Bay. These remains he referred to Huxley's species. 



