THE EMPEROR PENGUIN. 13 



that has been recorded of the wide distribution and comparatively frequent occurrence 

 of this bird, I should myself say most certainly not. It is to be met with all over the 

 Antarctic region. The fact of the death-rate being high at the only rookery as yet 

 located, a rookery which was situated almost as far south as the bird has ever been 

 known to wander, even in the summer months, does not necessarily prove that it would 

 be as high in every other rookery. There may be certain conditions at this spot, local 

 and climatic, which would account for an extra high mortality, or it may be, as I 

 have already suggested, that the bird has a great longevity and that this to some 

 extent counteracts the effect of a high rate of death in infancy.* 



A very pathetic sight was to be seen, resulting from the intense desire of the 

 unemployed adults to " mother " something. Having neither eggs nor living chickens 

 they are reduced to mothering the dead, and so it was no uncommon thing to see an 

 old bird trying to coax a frozen infant into a comfortable position between its legs, or 

 to see the head and neck of a lifeless chicken trailing out behind by the old bird's tail. 

 To such an extent was this practised that very few of the chickens found dead upon the 

 icefloe were in a fit condition for making specimens. The down was in most cases worn 

 by friction from off the stone-hard frozen body, and the legs and wings were in the 

 majority of cases broken. Were it not for the interest attached to these mutilations as 

 proof of one phase in a unique life history, few of the specimens found dead would have 

 been worth preserving. As it was, however, we brought a number of them home. 



As the size of the chicks increased, the difficulty of covering them up with the flap 

 grew greater, and when we visited them on the 19th of October we saw quite a number 

 in which the head and shoulders alone were out of sight, the large round hinder 

 quarters covered with greyish down sticking out behind, surmounted by a short black tail. 



Sometimes the chick would face the same way as the parent, and then but little 

 of its anatomy was out of sight, for the main increase in bulk was in the lower third 

 of its body, till the little individual became almost pyramidal in shape. The legs and 

 feet of the chicks soon became comparatively coarse and heavy for their size. They 

 certainly need to have them hard and horny, living as they do on the old bird's scaly 

 feet ; neither would it do them any harm to have the parts around the anus also horny, 

 for in some cases these parts were so abraded as to be raw and bleeding. 



The usual position taken up in the earlier stages was a crouching attitude with 

 the head as low as the feet, and it appeared to make little difference whether the chick 

 sat upright on its nurse's feet or lay upon its side. The chicks when quite small are 

 invisible so long as the nurse keeps still, but have the power, and use it frequently, of 

 poking the head out from beneath the flap to look about and whistle for more food. 



* Prof. Bell has kindly obtained for me, from Mr. Herbert Klugh, the following estimate of the age of an 

 Emperor Penguin so far as it may be deduced from the foregoing facts. " Assume that after the chick stage all 



the birds in the rookery live to the average age a and then die, then there must be of every age ; and so every 

 year ' die, so that in order to keep the population stationary, if - = 30, the average age = 34> years." 



