NATURAL HISTORY STUDIES 



by thrusting their head into their parent's gullet. 

 When the hen is sitting, nothing, not even a wrangle 

 with her next-door neighbour, will induce her to 

 move until her turn comes ; but the cocks are easily 

 led astray by their combativeness, and often do 

 much harm in the crowded rookery in spite of the 

 protests of adjacent birds who are seen trying to 

 make peace. 



A pretty incident was seen one day a cock 

 penguin bringing a lump of snow for the hen to 

 eat. " The cock, when away from his mate, evidently 

 had in his mind the fact of his hen being thirsty and 

 unable to get snow as he could." 



In the water the Adelie penguin has but one enemy, 

 the voracious sea-leopard, which sometimes swallows 

 it whole. The sea-leopards often lurk below the 

 ledge from which the penguins dive, and Dr. Levick 

 gives us a glimpse of another side of penguin nature 

 when he tells of the tricks the birds play to get one 

 of their number to be the first to go into the water. 

 Apart from the sea-leopards, man, and one another, 

 the adult penguins live at peace, but terrible 

 damage is often done at thaw-time by falling boul- 

 ders and land-slides. Sometimes, too, crowds of 

 nesting birds are buried in snow-drifts, which are 

 especially serious when they freeze on the surface. 

 But even then the tough creatures can survive for 

 many weeks within little chambers thawed by the 

 warmth of their bodies, and provided with breathing- 

 holes through which they thrust their heads. On 

 the whole, the full-grown birds are very safe, but 

 among the eggs and the young the mortality is 



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