144 



THE OSPEEY. 



on the upper surface, of the same colour, but 

 inside they are white, with greyish blends, the 

 smooth, small close-pressed feathers having, all 

 over them, the appearance of scales. These 

 wonderfully modified wings are unbcndatale 

 so that they cannot be folded up. They uiove 

 only from the shoulder-joint and are quite 

 devoid of quills. The wing, in fact, has be- 

 come a paddle like that of the seal or purpoise; 

 indeed, except as regards the head, this penguin 

 much resembles a porpoise when in the water. 

 The legs and feet— the former feathered almost 

 to the ground — are very thick and massive, 

 giving a firm basis of support for the long, up- 

 right body and adding much to the effect of the 

 little pompous strut or stride which gives the 

 bird its great charm of manner. You are 

 struck by the fact that the web joining- the toes 

 is rather deeply notched — enough, at least, to 

 surprise in so aquatic a being- — but, no doubt, 

 the powerful, long, thin wings, cutting the 

 water like the paddles of a Canadian canoe, 

 only tnore effectively, do the principal work — at 

 any rate when under the surface. On the land 

 poor Aptenodytes must always, in spite of his 

 sunn^' radiance, be just a little ridiculous, how- 

 ever charmingly so, but in the sea, amidst the 

 rough surging billows of the Antarctic Ocean — 

 "in cradle of the rude imperious surge" — he 

 must impress the imagination in a very different 

 manner — more as the dark cormorant or the 

 stormy petrel does. Unfortunately a .sort of 

 enlarged concrete wa.sh-basin is a poor substi- 

 tute for the Antarctic Ocean and so the poor, 

 lonely bird, taken from his kith and kin and 

 debarred from the enjoyment of all his natural 

 activities, seems to think. It is melancholy to 

 see this most aquatic of all birds in such ac- 

 commodation as English hospitality has sup- 

 plied him with. Still he is lucky in his degree. 

 After all he is not living in a rabbit-hutch or a 

 parrot-cage — at the Aquarium (!) hard by. We 

 should have liked to say something — to prattle a 

 little — of the ways and habits of these dear 

 birds, how they bi'eed (or bred; it is safest, also, 

 to use the past tense) on the Falkland Islands, 

 choosing always the noi'th or east side of them 

 and commencing" to la^- just on 7 October, how 

 some of the sites chosen were several miles from 

 the sea, and how the penguins marched from it 

 in detachments of from ten to twenty looking 

 like regiments of soldiers and making regular 

 roads through the grass, how they all set close, 

 together — some hundreds of thousands — and 

 hatched their eggs and reared their young- in 

 peace and amity had, how, till man, settling-, in 

 an evil hour, on the islands, commenced to rob 

 and murder them, they were as happ)^ as they 

 ai"e charming- and innocent. But Ceratodus is 

 waiting and, moreover, these things are known 

 — the last but too well, concerning- which one 

 need read but Professor Newton ("A Dictionai'y 

 of Birds," pages 705-6). So we will leave Apte- 



nodytes, only just adding that he is fed on her- 

 rings and never suggests being a bird except, 

 by association, when he preens his feathers". 



Thk Dkath of Prof. Ai.phonsb; MitNE- 

 Edwakd.s removes from the scientific field one 

 who opened a new epoch in ornithology. The 

 son of a still more distinguished father (Henri 

 Milne Edwards) he was born in 1835 at Paris, 

 obtained the degree of M. D. in 1859, and be- 

 came a Professor in the school of Pharmacy' at 

 Paris in 1865. In 1876 he entei'ed the Jardin des 

 Plantes as aid to his father and in 1871 became 

 the administrative director of the Menagerie 

 and Museum of Natural History. His greatest 

 work was published in 1872 and was entitled 

 "Recherches Anatomiques et Paleontologiques 

 pour servir a I'Histoire des Oiseaux Fossiles de 

 la France:" it was in four large quarto volumes, 

 two of text and two of plates. In this work 

 he endeavored to identify the fossil bones 

 of birds which had been collected and preserved 

 in different museums for years. In order to do 

 this, he was naturally obliged to study in detail 

 the osteology of the principal tj-pes of living 

 birds in order to have a basis for comparison 

 for the fossils, and this led him to interesting 

 i-esults. He found that the long bones (legs and 

 wings), which are the ones best presei'ved in a 

 fossil state, had good distinctive characters and 

 he was thus able to approximate those he se- 

 cured, and which had been neg-lected before, to 

 their proper places in the ornithological system. 



He died on the 21st of April. 



His family name is an interesting example of 

 the development of a patronymic. His father 

 was a young-er .son of the large family of an 

 Englishman resident in Belgium, about the 

 commencement of the century, and his name 

 was Edwards. Milne was his middle name. 

 His numerous communications to the French 

 Academj' of Science were indexed under the 

 name Edwards; but after his death the son's 

 communications were always referred to in the 

 index from the name Milne-Edwards. 



Thk Death of thf: Duke of Akcvee notably 

 lessens the number of Englishmen of high 

 station addicted to scientific pursuits. The 

 duke's family name was Geoi-g-e Douglass 

 Campbell. He was born in 1823, and succeeded 

 to the title in 1847. He was quite a volminous 

 author, and his "Reign of Law" (1866 etc.,) e.s- 

 pecially attracted considerable attention when 

 first published. He also wrote a number of 

 articles on geological matters, and especially 

 against Darwin's view of the formation of Coral 

 Islands. Incidentally, in various works and 

 magazine articles, he noted birds, chiefly giving 

 observations on their habits. 



He died on the 24th of April. 



