8 EDWAED A.. WILSON. 



return to their further history later, and meanwhile continue to give an account of the 

 fourth and last journey that we made to Cape Crozier on behalf of the Emperor Penguins. 



Accompanied again by Cross and a naval stoker, Whitfield, I started for the 

 spot on October 12th. Our journey out took just a week, and we arrived on the day 

 on which Lieut. Skelton the year before had killed the chickens that he first brought 

 home. It was possible, therefore, to compare the chickens of this year's brood with those 

 of the previous year, and we found them as nearly as possible identical in size. Moreover, 

 the chicken we had kept alive in the ship was fully as big now as the biggest in the 

 rookery, and we felt we might rightly take its rate of growth as an indication of what 

 was going on under the more natural conditions at Cape Crozier in the rookery itself. 



The number of dead chickens had certainly increased during the month we were 

 away. To compare with the last year's skins, I picked out two of the largest living 

 chicks that could be found. All were in down, and not one showed any sign of an 

 approaching moult. The unemployed adults were still to be seen nursing dead chickens 

 here and there, or waiting for a chance to seize a living one. 



We remained encamped as near the rookery as possible for close upon three 

 weeks, experiencing a ten-days' blizzard, which kept us confined to our sleeping bags 

 for no less than seven days. Nevertheless, it was not such an ill wind that it blew 

 no good to us, for had it not been for this southerly blizzard, we should have missed 

 what was one of the most interesting sights we saw. 



It will be remembered that in describing the second journey made by Lieut. Eoyds 

 to this rookery the year before, I said that he arrived on November 8th, and found 

 that all the adults as well as all the chickens had disappeared. Our journey was 

 therefore timed to watch, if possible, something of this migration to the north. The 

 chicks, I knew, were still in down, and unfit to enter the water. How, then, did the 

 parents take them north ? 



During the week that we were forced by the blizzard to be inactive, though we 

 never actually saw the young ones taken, we saw enough to suggest a solution of this 

 problem. The day before the storm broke we were on an old outlying cone of Mount 

 Terror, about 1,300 feet above the sea. Below us lay the Emperor Penguin rookery 

 on the bay ice, and Ross Sea, completely frozen over, was a plain of firm white ice to 

 the horizon. There was not even the lane of open water which usually runs along the 

 Barrier cliff stretching away as it does like a winding thread to the East and out of 

 sight. No space or crack could be seen with open water. Nevertheless the Emperors 

 were unsettled owing, there can be no doubt, to the knowledge that bad weather 

 was impending. The mere fact that the usual canal of open water was not to be 

 seen along the face of the Barrier meant that the ice in Ross Sea had a southerly 

 drift. This in itself was unusual, and was caused by a northerly wind with snow, 

 the precursor here of a storm from the south-west. The sky looked black and 

 threatening, the barometer began to fall, and before long down came snowflakes on 

 the upper heights of Mount Terror. 



