120 WITH THE U. S. NATURALISTS 



where there is no light, no heat, no twig, no leaf, 

 no moss, nothing but darkness, and cold, and ice. 

 The Emperor Penguin of the Antarctic lays her 

 single large egg in the awful silence and night of 

 a South Polar winter, where the average tempera- 

 ture is 50 degrees below zero and may even reach 

 80 degrees below. For seven long weeks she 

 broods over that egg, making no nest — for there 

 is nothing with which she can make a nest — choos- 

 ing a piece of sea-ice as the j^lace whereon to hold 

 her dreadful vigil. 



'^The appalling task that lies before her is to 

 hatch an egg, by the heat of her own body, on sea 

 ice, in the age-long dark, with a temperature of 

 such fearful cold that it is incredible even how the 

 bird survives. The Emperor Penguin has her 

 own device. Standing upright, she keeps the egg 

 from actually touching the ice by placing it on the 

 top of her large webbed feet, where it is held in 

 place and covered by a heavily feathered fold of 

 skin which hangs from the under side of the body 

 like a curtain and shields the egg from the wind. 

 For seven weeks the Penguin stands thus, patiently 

 waiting until her goggle-eyed, heavilj^-fluffed chick 

 is hatched. I know of no more terrible test of 

 endurance in the whole bird-world." 



