4iS AUKS. 



marine vegetables, upon which it feeds. A considerable portion 

 of the year is employed by these birds in providing for their 

 young, in consequence of its being necessary that their progeny 

 should acquire sufficient vigour to resist the raging clement on 

 which they are destined to dwell, and which they most probably 

 never leave until, by the impulse of nature, they in their turn seek 

 the land for the purpose of reproduction. Notwithstanding this 

 care for the preservation of the brood, heavy. gales of wind fre- 

 quently destroy them in great numbers. From their incapacity for 

 running, and their total inability to fly, the parent birds, when on 

 land, are very easily captured ; indeed, they offer no resistance, 

 except a smart peck with the bill. The young, until nearly as 

 large as the adult, are covered with a thick coating of long down, 

 Avhich, as they arrive at maturity, is replaced by short stiff feathers ; 

 these latter must be perfectly developed before the bird ventures 

 upon the sea. 



The type of this sub-family is — 



The Patagonian or King Penguin {Aptenodytes Pennaniii). These 

 birds arc very numerous in high southern latitudes. Mr. G. Bennet has par- 

 ticularly described a colony which covered an extent of thirty or forty acres, 

 at the north end of ftlacquarrie Island, in the South Pacific Ocean: "The 

 number of penguins collected together in this spot is immense: it would be 

 almost impossible to guess at it with any near approach to truth, as, during 

 the whole of the day and night, thirty or forty thousand of them are continually 

 landing, and an equal number going to sea. They are arranged, when on 

 shore, in as compact a manner, and in as regular ranks, as a regiment of 

 soldiers, and are classed with the greatest order, the young birds being in one 

 situation, the moulting birds in another, the sittmg hens in a third, the clean 

 birds in a fourth, iS:c. ; and so strictly do birds in a simdar condition congre- 

 gate, that, should a bird that is moulting intrude itself among those that are 

 clean, it is immediately ejected from among them. The females hatch the 

 eggs h\ keeping them close between their thighs, and if approacncd during 

 the time of incubation, move away, carrying the eggs with them. At this time 

 the male bird goes to sea to collect food for the female, which soon becomes 

 very fat. After the young is hatched, both parents go to sea and bring home 

 food for it, and it soon becomes so fat as to be scarcely able to walk — the old 

 birds getting very thin. They sit quite upright in their roosting-places, and 

 walk in an erect position until they arrive at the beach, when they throw 

 themselves on their breast to encounter the very heavy sea which awaits them." 



The penguins are very clamorous, and the noise which they make, "some- 

 thing between quacking and braying," can be heard in loud chorus at a great 

 distance — a concert which, however discordant it may seem to musical ears, 

 is not altogether without its utility, seeing that not unfrcquently the nocturnal 

 cries of these and other sea-birds have given timely warning to mariners of 

 the rocks on which they might otherwise have perished, 



