PENGUIN 705 
as incapable of flexure as the flippers of a Cetacean, though they 
move freely at the shoulder-joint, and some at least of the species 
occasionally make use of them for progressing on land. In the 
water they are most efficient paddles, and are usually, if not always, 
worked, as birds’ wings commonly are (cf. FLIGHT, pp. 267-269), 
with a rotatory action. The plumage which clothes the whole body, 
leaving no bare spaces, generally consists of small scale-like feathers, 
many of them consisting only of a simple shaft without the develop- 
ment of barbs; but several of the species have the head decorated 
with long cirrhous tufts (MACCARONI), and in some the tail-quills, 
which are very numerous, are also long. In standing these birds 
preserve an upright position, generally resting on the “tarsus” ” 
alone, but in walking or running on land this is kept nearly vertical, 
and their weight is supported by the toes as well. 
The most northerly limit of the Penguins’ range in the Atlantic 
is Tristan da Cunha, and in the Indian Ocean Amsterdam Island, 
but they also occur off the Cape of Good Hope and along the south 
coast of Australia, as well as on the south and east of New Zealand, 
while in the Pacific one species at least extends along the west coast 
of South America and to the Galapagos ; but north of the equator 
none are found. In the breeding-season they resort to the most 
desolate lands in higher southern latitudes, and indeed have been 
met with as far to the southward as navigators have penetrated. 
Possibly the Falkland Islands may still be regarded as the locality 
richest in species,? though, whatever may have been the case once, 
their abundance there as individuals does not now nearly approach 
what it is in many other places, owing to the ravages of man, whose 
advent is always accompanied by massacre and devastation on an 
enormous scale—the habit of the helpless birds, when breeding, to 
congregate by hundreds and thousands in what are called “ Penguin- 
rookeries ” contributing to the ease with which their slaughter can 
1 The pterylographical characters of the Penguins are well described by Mr. 
Hyatt (Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. 1871). Mr. Bartlett has observed (Proc. 
Zool. Soc. 1879, pp. 6-9) that, instead of moulting in the way that birds ordinarily 
do, Penguins, at least in passing from the immature to the adult dress, cast off 
the short scale-like feathers from their wings in a manner that he compares to 
“‘the shedding of the skin in a serpent.” 
2 The three metatarsals in the Penguins are not, as in other Birds, united for 
the whole of their length, but only at the extremities, thus preserving a portion of 
their originally distinct existence, a fact probably attributable to arrest of develop- 
ment, since the researches of Prof. Gegenbaur shew that the embryos of all Birds, 
so far as is known, possess these bones in an independent condition. More 
recently Prof. Marsh has found that in the Dinosaurian genus Ceratosawrus the 
metatarsals acquire a condition very similar to that which they present in the 
Penguins (Am. Journ. Sc. Aug. 1884). 
3 An interesting account of the Penguins of these islands is given by Capt. 
Abbott (Zbis, 1860, p. 336). 
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