PENGUIN 705 



as incapable of flexure as the flippers of a Cetacean, though they 

 move freely at the shoulder- joint, and sonae at least of the species 

 occasionally make use of them for progi'essing on land. In the 

 water they are most efficient paddles, and are usually, if not always, 

 worked, as bii'ds' wings commonly are {cf. Flight, pp. 267-269), 

 with a rotatory action. The plumage which clothes the whole body, 

 leaving no bare spaces, generally consists of small scale-like feathers, 

 many of them consisting only of a simple shaft without the develop- 

 ment of barbs ; but several of the species have the head decorated 

 with long cirrhous tufts (Maccaroni), and in some the tail-quills, 

 which are very numerous, are also long.^ In standing these birds 

 preserve an upright position, generally resting on the "tarsus"^ 

 alone, but in walking or running on land this is kept nearly vertical, 

 and their weight is supported by the toes as well. 



The most northerly limit of the Penguins' range in the Atlantic 

 is Tristan da Cunha, and in the Indian Ocean Amsterdam Island, 

 but they also occur off the Cape of Good Hope and along the south 

 coast of Australia, as well as on the south and east of New Zealand, 

 while in the Pacific one species at least extends along the west coast 

 of South America and to the Galapagos ; but north of the equator 

 none are found. In the breeding-season they resort to the most 

 desolate lands in higher southern latitudes, and indeed have been 

 met with as far to the southward as navigators have penetrated. 

 Possibly the Falkland Islands may still be regarded as the locality 

 richest in species,^ though, whatever may have been the case once, 

 their abundance there as individuals does not now nearly approach 

 what it is in many other places, owing to the ravages of man, whose 

 advent is always accompanied by massacre and devastation on an 

 enormous scale — the habit of the helpless birds, when breeding, to 

 congregate by hundreds and thousands in what are ca,lled " Penguin- 

 rookeries " contributing to the ease with which their slaughter can 



^ The pterylographical characters of the Penguins are well described by Mr. 

 Hyatt {Troc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. 1871). Mr. Bartlett has observed {Proc. 

 Zool. Soc. 1879, pp. 6-9) that, instead of moulting in the way that bii-ds ordinarily 

 do, Penguins, at least in passing from the immature to the adult dress, cast off 

 the short scale-like feathers from their wings in a manner that he compares to 

 "the shedding of the skin in a serpent." 



^ The three metatarsals in the Penguins are not, as in other Birds, united for 

 the whole of their length, but only at the extremities, thus preserving a portion of 

 their originally distinct existence, a fact probably attributable to arrest of develop- 

 ment, since the researches of Prof. Gegenbaur shew that the embryos of all Birds, 

 so far as is known, possess these bones in an independent condition. More 

 recently Prof. Marsh has found that in the Dinosaurian genua Ceratosaurus the 

 metatarsals acquire a condition very similar to that which they present in tlie 

 Penguins {Am. Journ. Sc. Aug. 1884). 



•* An interesting account of the Penguins of these islands is given by Capt. 

 Abbott [Ibis, 1860, p. 336). 



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