476 ANNUAL KEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



One can not give a more exact idea of the penguin than by reprint- 

 ing these few lines of M. Racovitza, the eminent naturalist of the 

 Belgica expedition : 



Imagine a little old man, standing erect, provided with, two broad paddles instead 

 of arms, with a head small in comparison with the plump, stout body; imagine this 

 creature with his back covered with a dark coat spotted with blue, tapering behind 

 to a pointed tail that drags on the ground, and adorned in front with a glossy white 

 breastplate. Have this creature walk on his two feet, and give him at the same time 

 a droll little waddle and a continual movement of the head; you have before you 

 something irresistibly attractive and comical. 



Penguins have inhabited the Antarctic continent from very remote 

 geological periods. We will only remind our readers of the dis- 

 coveries of the Swedish expedition of Dr. Otto Nordenskjold, who 

 found on Seymour Island fossil bones belonging to five species, 

 each of which formed the type of a new genus, and which lived, 

 according to Dr. Wiman, who made a study of them, at the begin- 

 ning of the Tertiary period, in the Eocene epoch. 



At the present time, confining ourselves entkely to the birds 

 found below 60° south latitude, five species inhabit these southern 

 lands; among these five, two — the Emperor and the Adelie — are dis- 

 tributed over the whole circumference of the Antarctic continent; the 

 other three are confined to the neighborhood of the South American 

 Antarctic regions. 



There is first of all the Macaroni penguin (Catarrhades chrysolophus) ; 

 of which some rookeries of a few hundred individuals are found on 

 the South Shetland Islands, particularly on Deception Island. It 

 has a height of 60 centimeters; the back and head are bluish-black 

 with a velvety luster; above the eyes, bands of elongated eyebrows, 

 golden-yellow, meet on the forehead; the iris is garnet, the beak 

 reddish-brown with the commissure of the mandibles pale purple. 

 It is a quiet, peaceful, trusting creature, letting itself be easily 

 approached when on its nest, and even caressed, rarely trying to 

 give a blow with beak or wing. The rookeries of these Macaroni 

 penguins are often intermingled with those of the Antarctic penguin, 

 with which they live on goo<l terms. In their nest, which consists of 

 a mere depression in the ground, they lay toward the end of November 

 an egg of a slightly bluish-white, on which the parents sit alternately. 



Of the five species of Antarctic penguins, Catarrhades chrysolophus 

 is the one that ventures the shortest distance southward, not going 

 below 63° south latitude. Solitary individuals have been seen in the 

 South Orkney Islands; farther north one finds them in South Georgia 

 and even in the Falklands, and in the east on Prince Edward, Marion, 

 Kerguelen, and Heard Islands. 



The Antarctic penguin (Pygocelis antardica), slightly smaller than 

 the preceding, is easily distmguished from the other penguins by the 



