THE EMPEROR PENGUIN. 31 



The possibility that we have in the Emperor Penguin the nearest approach to a 

 primitive form not only of a penguin, but of a bird, makes the future working out 

 of its embryology a matter of the greatest possible importance. It was a great dis- 

 appointment to us that although we discovered their breeding ground, and although 

 we were able to bring home a number of deserted eggs and chicks, we were not 

 able to procure a series of early embryos by which alone the points of particular 

 interest can be worked out. To have done this in a proper manner from the spot at 

 which the ' Discovery ' wintered in McMurdo Sound would have involved us in 

 endless difficulties, for it would have entailed the risks of sledge travelling in mid- 

 winter with an almost total absence of light. It would at any time require that a 

 party of three at least, with full camp equipment, should traverse about a hundred 

 miles of the Barrier surface in the dark and should, by moonlight, cross over with 

 rope and axe the immense pressure ridges which form a chaos of crevasses at Cape 

 Crozier. These ridges, moreover, which have taken a party as much as two hours of 

 careful work to cross by daylight, must be crossed and re-crossed at every visit to the 

 breeding site in the bay. There is no possibility even by daylight of conveying over 

 them the sledge or camping kit, and in the darkness of mid-winter the impracticability 

 is still more obvious. Cape Crozier is a focus for wind and storm, where every breath 

 is converted, by the configuration of Mounts Erebus and Terror, into a regular drifting 

 blizzard full of snow. It is here, as I have already stated, that on one journey or 

 another we have had to lie patiently in sodden sleeping bags for as many as five and 

 seven days on end, waiting for the weather to change and make it possible for us to 

 leave our tents at all. If, however, these dangers were overcome there would still be 

 the difficulty of making the needful preparations from the eggs. The party would have 

 to be on the scene at any rate early in July. Supposing that no eggs were found upon 

 arrival, it would be well to spend the time in labelling the most likely birds, those for 

 example that have taken up their stations close underneath the ice cliffs. And if this 

 were done it would be easier then to examine them daily by the moonlight, if it and 

 the weather generally were suitable ; conditions, I must confess, not always easily 

 obtained at Cape Crozier. But if by good luck things happened to go well, it would 

 by this time be useful to have a shelter built of snow blocks on the sea-ice in which to 

 work with the cooking lamp to prevent the freezing of the egg before the embryo was 

 cut out, and in order that fluid solutions might be handy for the various stages of its 

 preparation ; for it must be borne in mind that the temperature all the while may be 

 anything between zero and 50 F. The whole work no doubt would be full of 

 difficulty, but it would not be quite impossible, and it is with a view to helping those 

 to whom the opportunity may occur in future, that this outline has been added 

 of the difficulties that would surely beset their path. 



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