10 EDWAKD A. WILSON. 



The two following days and nights the storm raged with so much drift that 

 we were forced to remain in our sodden sleeping bags, and it was not until the 

 28th that we were once more able to visit the edge of the overlooking cliff. It was then 

 blowing and drifting so hard that we got but an occasional glimpse of the birds below 

 in the bay. No ice was now to be seen on Ross Sea, even to the very horizon. More 

 ice had left the little bay, and precisely the same exodus was in progress that we had 

 seen before. On the edge of the bay ice, again, a pack of about a hundred birds were 

 waiting to be drifted north, and a file of adults going out from the shelter of the cliffs 

 to join them. There was still a remnant with their chickens waiting under the ice cliffs. 



On October 29th we made a day's journey to the Adelie Penguin rookery in most 

 objectionable weather, and on the 30th and 31st and on November 1st we were again 

 forced to remain in our camp by a renewal of the blizzard. On November 2nd the 

 weather cleared, and taking a rope and ice axes we crossed the pressure ridges and once 

 more visited the Emperors down on the sea-ice in their rookery. 



Ross Sea was free of ice, and the Emperors then remaining, in all about four 

 hundred, were scattered over the limited area of fast ice still filling up the bay. It 

 was now quite an easy task to number the chickens, for they were lying all around us 

 dead. There were not more than thirty left living in the rookery on November 2nd. 



In September, when Lieutenant Royds and I were here together, we calculated 

 that there were perhaps a hundred and fifty chicks amongst the thousand adults. We 

 were therefore in a position to check our estimate, for we could collect into a heap all the 

 dead chickens we found lying on the ice (see fig. 23, p. 30). Including the deserted eggs, 

 these numbered just a hundred, making the total for the year's production one hundred 

 and thirty young. This gives the surprising death rate of 77 per cent. Thus : 



September 13th, 1903 Dead chicks picked up and brought home to the ship 18 



Eggs unhatched and deserted, all brought home to the ship... ... 20 



November 2nd, 1903 Dead chicks picked up 63 



Chicks still living 30 



Total ... 131 



giving a total of one hundred and thirty-one as the produce for the year, of which no 

 fewer than one hundred and one lost their lives before leaving the rookery for the 

 pack ice. 



It was most interesting to note how closely these observations for the year 1903 

 agreed with those which had been made on the same spot the year before by 

 Lieutenant Skelton. In 1902 Lieutenants Royds and Skelton had been encamped 

 there during a blizzard of five days and, on October 18th, when the storm abated, had 

 gone down on to the sea-ice to take a count of the number of birds and chickens. 

 Skelton's estimate was about thirty living chickens and four hundred adult birds, 

 almost identically the same as in the year that followed. 



The blizzard which detained us the following year lasted ten days. Before its 



