158 THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY' [Sept. 



These chicks contmued to afford us entertainment; they 

 had no fear whatever, and when they thought that the time 

 had come for more food, they clamoured loudly for it. 



At first they were fed on crustaceans, and afterwards on 

 seal-meat, but both of these were chewed up by the person 

 who fed them, so that there should be no chance of indigestion. 

 It was obvious from their shape that they were well designed 

 as regards capacity for containing food, but even allowing for 

 the fact that they did not study the symmetry of their waists, 

 one paused aghast at the amount they swallowed. From the 

 first we had to regard them as small tanks, but as they grew 

 they almost seemed to be bottomless caverns, into which any 

 quantity of material might be dropped without making any 

 appreciable difference. 



After meals their small heads would sink back on their 

 round, distended little bodies, and they would go placidly off 

 to sleep in their well-lined nest, when they were covered up 

 and for the moment forgotten ; but as the next meal-hour 

 approached there would be a great 'to-do,' and the box would 

 be uncovered to show the small heads bobbing up and down 

 and giving forth shrill demands for more food, nor was there 

 peace till they got it. 



Things went on like this until our small friends suddenly 

 took it into their heads that there was much too long an 

 interval between supper and breakfast, and after this they used 

 to go off like alarum clocks in the middle of the night. There 

 was only one way of pacifying them, and their custodian had 

 perforce to get out of his warm bed and to chew up more seal- 

 meat until they were satisfied. 



Of course we could scarcely hope to rear these birds under 

 such artificial conditions, and we were not surprised when one 

 of them pined away and died ; but the other lived and throve 

 for a long time, and only met his end when the warmer weather 

 came on and he was incautiously put in one of the deck-houses 

 for a short time; this exposure brought on the rickets, from 

 which he never recovered. 



During the interval between the return of our spring 



