THE PENGUINS 2321 



landing, the penguins always make for certain well-defined tracts leading up to the 

 "rookeries," as their places of assembly are called, and where they not unfre- 

 quently collect in thousands, these main tracts branching out into a number of 

 diverging paths when they reach the rookey. The nest of the rock hopper is merely 

 a shallow depression in the black soil, which may or may not be lined with a few stalks 

 of dry grass. In this are deposited two greenish-white eggs, about the size of those 

 of a duck, in the incubation of which both male and female birds take their share. 

 The black-footed species, according to L,ayard, deposits, however, but a single white 

 egg, which rests on the bare ground. On the other hand, the jackass penguin is in 

 the habit of nesting in burrows, which may be as much as twenty feet in depth; 

 and the same is also not unfrequently the case with the little blue penguin of New 

 Zealand, although the two eggs of this species are sometimes laid in the crevices of 

 rocks. The breeding time of this species on the islands off the Cape lasts through 

 August, September, and October. 



The penguins inhabiting Tristan da Cunha migrate about April, and return in 

 July or August; but where they go seems not to be ascertained, although it is quite 

 certain that they cannot remain at sea for such a protracted period. Although dur- 

 ing their aquatic journey they do not travel with anything like the speed of birds on 

 the wing, they have, as Moseley remarks, the compensating advantage of a constant 

 supply of food. Writing of the habits of the little blue penguin, Gould observes 

 that "its powers of progression in the deep are truly astonishing; its swimming 

 powers are in fact so great that it stems the waves of the most turbulent seas with 

 the utmost facility, and during the severest gale descends to the bottom, where 

 among beautiful beds of coral and forests of seaweed, it paddles about in search 

 of crustaceans, small fish, and marine vegetables, all of which kinds of food were 

 found in the stomachs of those I dissected." Of the jackass penguin, Darwin says 

 that when crawling, it may be said on four legs, through the tussocks or on the side 

 of a grassy cliff, it moves so very quickly that it might easily be taken for a quad- 

 ruped. When at sea and fishing, it comes to the surface for the purpose of breath- 

 ing with such velocity, and dives again so instantaneously, that I defy anyone at 

 first sight to be sure that it is not a fish leaping for sport. This species, by the 

 way, derives its popular name from its habit, when on shore, of throwing back its 

 head and giving vent to a cry not unlike a donkey's bray. 

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