THE EMPEROR PENGUIN. 29 



7' 7 cm. in its greatest breadth, and has a surface which provides a certain amount 

 of internal evidence for this belief, as I presently hope to show. 



In the account of the breeding habits of the Emperor Penguin, I have stated that the 

 eggs are probably laid in the middle third of the Antarctic winter, that is to say about 

 the beginning of July. Previously, therefore, to the year 1897, when the ' Belgica' 

 first spent a winter in the southern ice, there was no possibility of a fresh Emperor's egg 

 finding its way to England. Neither did anyone on the ' Belgica,' or on the ' Southern 

 Cross ' Expedition, claim to have discovered either the egg or breeding place of this 

 penguin. How then could there be any possibility that this Drayton egg was really 

 what it claimed to be ? Certainly it could not have been a fresh egg, but it might 

 quite well have been a deserted one picked up on an icefloe by a vessel cruising in the 

 Antarctic during the summer months. It must by that time, no matter what ship 

 found it, have been exposed to some six months' weathering on a floating piece of sea- 

 ice, at a season when the sun shines night and day and is capable of producing thaw 

 and wet where any foreign body could absorb its heat and melt the ice. Here then 

 are the conditions for producing an extremely weathered shell, such as is seen in the 

 Drayton egg. The surface has completely lost its outer chalky covering, and it is 

 worn and smooth except for the minute longitudinal pores that are characteristic of 

 the weathered examples in our own Cape Crozier series. It has very few of the 

 warty excrescences which characterise the majority of the Cape Crozier eggs, but 

 these again are not present in all Emperor Penguins' eggs, nor on the other hand 

 are they always absent in the normal egg of the King Penguin. 



In respect of size the Drayton egg is small for an Emperor's, but yet not so 

 small in either dimensions as the smallest of the Cape Crozier series. In length 

 it is 0*2 cm. longer than the shortest, and in breadth it is 0'2 cm. greater than 

 the narrowest of the Cape Crozier series. And if one compares the dimensions of 

 the Drayton egg with the average of a dozen King Penguins' eggs taken at random, 

 one finds it to be 10*9 cm. by 7*75 cm. as compared with 10 "1 cm. by 7 '36 cm. 

 in the King, and somewhat longer than the largest of a series of King Penguins' 

 eggs which we brought home in the ' Discovery ' from the Macquarie Islands in 1901. 



There can be no doubt, therefore, that this egg is in reality that of an Emperor 

 Penguin, and that it was brought home from the Antarctic regions by the French 

 Expedition of 1837-1840, some member of which must have picked it up on an icefloe 

 during the summer months of 1837-1838. 



But although it gives an idea of the deeper characters of this penguin's egg-shell, 

 the surface of the fresh-laid egg is very different. It is covered in the first place 

 with a thick white chalky concretion, such as is found on the surface of a Shag's or a 

 Gannett's egg.* The colour of the fresh shell has a faint greenish tinge, which is found 

 to be quite a deep green when examined by transmitted light. The surface of the 

 harder shell below is characteristically pitted with a multitude of little longitudinal pores, 



* Shag = Phalacrocorax graculus ; Gannet = Sula bassana. 



