THE FASTING PERIOD 



of quartz, and he witnessed the last incident 

 with me. 



I may here mention an experiment I tried some 

 days later. I painted some pebbles a bright red 

 and had others covered with bright green cotton 

 material as I had no other coloured paint. Mixing 

 a handful of these coloured stones together I placed 

 them in a little heap amongst natural black ones 

 near a nest-covered knoll. Returning in a few 

 hours I found nearly all the red stones and one or 

 two of the green ones gone, and later found them 

 in nests. Later still, all the red ones had dis- 

 appeared, and last of all the green ones. I traced 

 nearly all these to nests, and found a few days later 

 that, like the pieces of white quartz, they were 

 being stolen from nest to nest and thus slowly 

 being distributed in different directions. At other 

 times I saw pieces of tin, pieces of glass, half a 

 stick of chocolate, and the head of a bright metal 

 teaspoon in different nests near our hut, the articles 

 evidently having been taken from our scrap-heap. 

 Thus it is evident that penguins like bright colours 

 and prefer red to green, as instanced by the selec- 

 tion of the coloured pebbles. I am sorry that I 

 did not carry these colour tests further. 



During October 29 the stream of arrivals was 



D 49 



