THE KING PENGUIN. 33 



FOR a concise account of the range and distribution of the King Penguin I must refer 

 the reader to Mr. Howard Saunders' account in the "Antarctic Manual." Briefly, it 

 has been recorded from South Georgia, Tierra del Fuego, and the south-eastern portions 

 of the Straits of Magellan, the Falkland Islands, Marion, Kerguelen, and Heard Islands, 

 and the Crozets. Farther East it has been recorded from the Stewart and Snares 

 Islands, New Zealand, and as far south as the Macquarie Islands. It has never been 

 recorded within the Antarctic Circle. 



Without attempting to give a complete description of the bird's life history, it 

 will not be out of place if I give a short account of our visit to the Macquarie 

 Island, where, on November 22nd, 1901, we investigated a large rookery of King 

 Penguins at perhaps the busiest time of the year. Macquarie Island lies about 600 

 miles S. W. of New Zealand, and we made our landing on the east side, anchoring in 

 Fisherman's Cove. The shore is belted by a thick fringe of kelp, and the eastern 

 slopes of the island are covered with a coarse tussock grass, which grows breast high. 

 Between the foot of the hills at this point and the seashore is an extensive beach and 

 a stretch of stony quagmire, with patches of tussock here and there, and it was in this 

 quagmire that the King Penguin rookery was situated (fig. 26, p. 34). 



Megalestris antarctica was abundant here ; we also saw in varying numbers 

 Larus dominicanus, Ossifraga gigantea, and a Cormorant, one of which was taken and 

 proved to be Phalacrocorax traversi ; Sterna frontalis ; Prion of more than one species, 

 probably desolatus and vittatus, and certainly banksi ; Diomedea exulans, a young one ; 

 I), melanophrys, Thalassogeron culminatus, and a species of Phcebetria. On shore we 

 found a species of Ocydromus in abundance, which has since been named 0. scotti 

 by Mr. Ogilvie Grant, from a specimen sent home soon after our own visit to the 

 Island, by Lord Ranfurly ; and lastly, a large nesting colony of Catarrhactes schlegeli, 

 which was quite close to but distinct from that of the King Penguins. 



In one of the whalers' huts on shore we found, amongst other things, a collection of 

 prepared bird skins, amongst which I noticed the albino example of Catarrhactes schlegeli, 

 which is now in the British Museum collection. This and some other skins I had intended 

 saving from the mice, which had already played havoc with the feet and bills of the 

 majority ; but in the necessarily hurried business of transferring a collection of about 

 forty fresh-killed birds and eggs to the boats, they were forgotten. We were surprised 

 on our return to England nearly three years after to recognize the skin in the National 

 collection. 



There was in the King Penguins' rookery a large number of birds busily 

 incubating eggs. These, as is now well known, they hold upon their feet, tucked in 

 between the legs and covered from sight by a loose fold of skin and feathers, and so 

 tightly were they held that although we lifted the birds bodily from the ground, yet the 

 egg was very seldom dropped. The object of thus holding the egg is to keep it from 

 the wet and muddy quagmire in which the birds prefer to incubate ; a parallel case to 

 the Emperor Penguin, where the object is to keep the egg from contact with the ice. 



