Penguins of the Falkland Islands. 337 



of their breeding-places are near the sea, and generally near a 

 freshwater pond ; others, however, are several miles inland. Why 

 they should select these latter places, so far from salt water, is a 

 mystery. The grass from the sea to the breeding-ground is 

 trodden down and made into a kind of road, by detachments of 

 these birds of from ten to twenty going to the sea and returning. 

 They make no nest, but lay in a hollow in the earth. They occupy 

 a square piece of ground, and deposit their eggs, two in number, 

 as close to one another as they can sit. When the young birds 

 are old enough, they all go to sea, and only occasional stragglers 

 are found on the coast at any other time of the year. One thing 

 may be noted with these birds, which is, that when their num- 

 bers increase, they appear to establish new rookeries close to the 

 old one. None of them breed, to my knowledge, on the south 

 shore of the Falkland Islands, but all their breeding-places are 

 situated on the north and east sides. This bird is called in the 

 Falklands the Gentoo Penguin : whence the name I leave others 

 to conjecture. I may mention, that the ground about the 

 rookeries is covered with small round stones, which these birds 

 eject, on coming up from the salt water, in green masses about 

 the size of a shilling. 



Aptenodytes chrysocome, the Falkland Islands' Rock-hopper (so 

 called from its jumping from rock to rock), comes up from the 

 sea about the middle of October, and lays the first week in 

 November. Like the other Penguins, they return to the same 

 breeding-grounds. These are situated on high cliffy slopes near 

 the sea, and with a freshwater stream running near, in which 

 the birds constantly wash themselves. They are also, like the 

 Geutoos, continually going to and returning from the salt water. 

 The space occupied by some of the breeding-places is nearly 

 500 yards long by about 50 broad, and their eggs lie so close 

 together, that it is almost impossible to walk through without 

 breaking some of them. I have often wondered, on disturbing 

 these birds and driving them away from their eggs, how, on 

 their return, they could pick out their own among so many 

 hundreds. Yet this they do, walking back straight to their 

 eggs, and getting them between their legs with the utmost care, 

 fixing them in the bare space between the feathei's in the centre 



