02 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
A king penguin tucking its egg into the so-called 
‘“prood-pouch,’’ which is merely the space be- 
{tween belly, feet and tail 
A Johnny standing over its eggs and momen- 
tarily spreading its brood-pouch, or_ incubating 
surface 
between belly, tail and feet. I was never 
able to discover in either sex of the king 
penguin anything resembling a “cavity,” 
such as Weddell mentions. 
Incubating king penguins can shift 
about slowly, in spite of the eggs on 
their insteps. They drag themselves 
along rather painfully, maintaining their 
hunched positions, and hitching their 
feet with short steps so that the egg may 
not roll out. They are fond of crowding 
together closely — yet seemingly for no 
better purpose than to facilitate quarrel- 
ing! Day after day at the colony I was 
a neutral witness of their noisy squabbles. 
The sitters glare at each other, with 
sinuous necks twisted and heads cocked 
sidewise, and deal resounding whacks 
with their flippers, or lunges with their 
sharp bills, to all their neighbors. Often 
whole groups will be engaged in an 
indiscriminate skirmish with these ra- 
piers and broadswords. The birds are 
careful to maintain their equilibrium 
while banging each other, but it is a 
wonder nevertheless, that no harm 
comes to the eggs. On February 5 I 
photographed a typical battle. One 
sitter was employing its bill to mutilate 
the back of another’s neck. The latter 
bird, grunting vehemently, was deliver- 
ing backhand blows with one wing but 
without turning to face its opponent. 
Only the intrusion of weapons of other 
pugnacious penguins succeeded in divert- 
ing the attentions of these two from 
each other. The affair ended in a 
general mélée in which nine birds took 
part, each for itself and against every 
other. Such is the reach and flexibility 
of the king’s extensible neck that each 
sitter can very easily become the center 
of a large circle of trouble. 
It seems probable that the breeding 
season of this species extends through 
the major part of the southern summer, 
with great individual variation in the 
