SWIMMING OF PENGUINS 



for the future of the penguin. Furthermore, the barren 

 shores which they haunt do not breed fierce carnivorous 

 creatures to assault them when on the nest. In the 

 water the penguin swims with the greatest elegance 

 and with a peculiarly buoyant motion that suggests a 

 positive flight ; this, if the water be clear enough, will 

 certainly be the delusion of the onlooker. Black to 

 brown above and with a white belly is the prevailing 

 hue of the penguin tribe, and the species which we select 

 here, as well as some of its immediate allies, have a 

 streak of yellow feathers upon the head, which relieves 

 this dull coloration. Swimming in the water with the 

 paddles extended, the black back, with occasional 

 views of the white underparts, quite suggests, when 

 the animal is seen from above, one of the dolphin tribe, 

 to which the long beak and the abbreviated tail adds not 

 a little in the way of resemblance. Further, the yellow 

 about the head is repeated in some dolphins, while the 

 flippers of the bird are by no means widely different 

 to outward view from the swimming fore limbs of 

 the dolphin. It has been pointed out, too, that this 

 penguin will at times spring clean out of the water, and 

 when a flock, if we can apply the term flock to anything 

 that does not live in air or on land, rise out of the waves 

 in rapid succession the appearance of a shoal of por- 

 poises is distinctly simulated. So aptly constructed 

 are the penguins for a life on the ocean wave that one 

 hears with surprise a story to the effect that the shores 

 of certain parts of New Zealand are sometimes littered 

 with the corpses of the small penguin, Eudyptula minor, 

 which have perished in the surf. Besides its paddles, 

 its short neck, its generally whale-like outline, and its 

 strong swimming feet, the penguin is eminently fitted 

 for a submarine life by its unusual fatness, and by the 

 close coating of feathers which decks its body. In 

 almost all other birds a careful examination will show 



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