39^ Boobies and Penguins 



The Penguin, however, has been preserved from 

 this fate, because the Antarctic regions offer httle or 

 no inducement to searchers after wealth to come to 

 them. And in the days when seal-oil was valuable, 

 and it was worth while to make expeditions to the 

 barren shores of Antarctic islands in order to collect 

 it, the Penguins were only molested for edible purposes, 

 for they are just edible, with considerable culinary 

 manipulation. There are several kinds of Penguins, 

 varying in size from the diminutive Pygmy or Eudyptila 

 minor of a few inches high, to the Emperor Penguin of 

 as many feet. Most good museums furnish examples. 

 But all possess the same general characteristics. 

 First, their legs being very short and thick, and their 

 webbed feet wide and strong, they ' sit up,' as it were. 

 It is really standing up like a duck stretching its 

 wings, but almost perpendicularly. And this is their 

 normal pose. They carry their heads, with short, 

 pointed beaks, very erect, and their flippers, for the 

 wing in these birds is nothing but a seal flipper covered 

 with feathers instead of fur, hanging down in a ludi- 

 crously pathetic and helpless manner. Sir John 

 Narborough, an old navigator whose voyages make 

 most entertaining reading, says that their appearance 

 as he first saw them gazing at him from their rocky 

 ledges was that of rows of school children standing 

 very quiet with little white pinafores on. This because 

 the closely set feathers on their breasts are white, 

 with tinges of beautiful shades of purple and gold 

 around the edges in the Emperors. 



Their movements on shore are almost as ungainly 

 as those of a seal ; compared with them a duck or 

 goose glides along with stately grace. For their land 

 promenades their flippers are perfectly useless, dangling 

 by their sides as if broken. Why they do not topple 



