226 
the magnificent king penguin (A pteno- 
dytes patachonica) and the companion- 
able little Johnny penguin (Pygoscelis 
papua). The former are dignified, im- 
posing birds, standing a yard high, 
contented with their own society, and 
indifferent toward other creatures. As 
a badge of aristocracy they 
around their necks gleaming gold collars. 
The Johnny penguins, on the other 
hand, are roly-poly and plebeian, in- 
terested in everybody, and quite re- 
mind one of small boys. The two 
species live on the same territory and 
wear 
follow the same vocation of deep-sea 
fishers, yet their society is inviolably 
distinct. 
We first met the Johnny penguins on 
the southward voyage in latitude 43° S., 
on November 15, 1912. Cold westerly 
winds had raised a heavy swell on this 
day, and just before nightfall penguins 
began to pass the ship in couples or 
small groups. They remained below 
the water most of the time, but their 
braying calls frequently attracted at- 
tention to sleek heads and upright tails, 
the only visible parts of birds at the 
surface. 
Some of the Johnny penguin rookeries 
at South Georgia were on low ground 
near the sea, but the largest rookery 
that we discovered, comprising between 
four and five thousand birds, was dis- 
tributed over knolls and ridges behind 
a great moraine-beach at the Bay of 
Isles. The site is bounded by two 
glaciers so that it can be reached only 
from the bay. In 1912-13 the penguin 
settlements, beginning half a mile from 
the water front, extended inland and up 
the hills to a height of about six hundred 
feet. As long as young penguins were 
on this nesting ground, processions of 
adults might at all times be seen coming 
and going between the high land and 
the sea. The birds met and_ passed 
THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
each other without a visible sign of 
recognition, each trundling gravely along 
on its own business. A _ broad thor- 
oughfare had been stamped across the 
moraine, worn down doubtless through 
generations of the pattering of little 
leathery feet, while deeply grooved, 
sinuous avenues extended up the long 
snowbank to the highest portions of the 
colony. 
This type of rookery is common at 
South Georgia wherever high land is at 
all accessible. No matter how much 
available territory there may be near 
the water, no matter how wearisome the 
scramble up the hillsides, a certain 
proportion of the members of each colony 
selects as home the summits of the windy, 
shelterless ridges. Why should marine 
birds which lack altogether the power of 
flight, and which are at best indifferent 
walkers, prefer to make the period of 
propagation difficult for themselves by 
retreating as far as possible from their 
only source of food? 
A consideration of the history of South 
Georgia may help in an interpretation 
of the strange instinct which drives the 
Johnny penguins to nest among the hills. 
The island is small, but its glaciers are 
as mighty as those of Spitzbergen, and 
there is ample evidence that it was 
formerly completely buried by an ice- 
cap. The interior, which rises to an 
altitude of more than six thousand feet, 
is no longer ice-clad, excepting on the 
peaks, but is covered with an everlasting 
névé of the Alpine type. This con- 
solidates at the sources of all the valleys 
to form tongues of ice, most of which 
extend into the sea, ending in abrupt 
walls. Since most of the fiords have 
been carved out by former extensions 
of the valley glaciers, the coast is almost 
beachless, the few areas of low, flat land 
being terminal moraines or beds_ of 
moribund or extinct glaciers. Even 
