288 A HISTORY OF BIRDS 



"That no great care is taken to save the chick from injury 

 is obvious from an examination of the dead ones lying on the 

 ice. AH had rents and claw marks in the skin, and we saw this 

 not only in the dead but in the living. The chicks are fully 

 alive to the inconvenience of being fought for by so many clumsy 

 nurses, and I have seen them not only make the best use of 

 their legs in avoiding so much attention, but remain to starve 

 and freeze in preference to being nursed. Undoubtedly, I 

 think that of the yj per cent, that die before they shed their 

 down, quite half are killed by kindness. ..." So overmastering 

 is this parental instinct that birds having neither eggs nor 

 chicks will persistently endeavour to coax a frozen infant into 

 a comfortable position between its legs, in a vain endeavour to 

 nurse it back to life! 



With the Adelie Penguins the struggle for life among the 

 chicks is hardly less severe though it begins later and takes a 

 different form, whereby, as Dr. Wilson remarks, one may see 

 exemplified in a direct and indisputable manner the far-reach- 

 ing law of the survival of the fittest, "the cruelty, the pathos, 

 the humour, and yet the admirable perfection of the whole 

 system being irresistibly brought home to the observer. 



" The sooty-grey young ones in the third week in January 

 were almost as big as their parents and quite as active. Of 

 these young birds there were literally thousands, and all were 

 hungry, many very hungry. Moreover, each individual chicken 

 acted upon the assumption that every old bird, as it came from 

 the shore, was full of shrimps. On this assumption it had no 

 choice but to run the gauntlet. Chased incontinently . . . 

 by the unfortunate infants, the fond parent ran hither and 

 thither with a keen eye for the chicken it had once called its 

 own. Driven at last to bay, it could only turn to swear and 

 silence its persecuting followers, for the moment, with a vicious 

 peck, but the moment its search again commenced it would be 

 caught up and followed and worried in precisely the same way 

 by a fresh relay of young ones, all belonging to some one 

 else. . . . The more robust of the young thus worried an adult, 

 until, because of his importunity, he was fed. But with the 

 less robust a much more pathetic ending was the rule. A 

 chick that had fallen behind in this literal race for life, starving 

 and weak, and getting daily weaker because it could not run 



