372 THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY 5 [Appx. 



that even so early in the spring as it then was every egg was 

 hatched, and only chickens were to be found under the old birds. 

 There could not have been fewer than a thousand birds and about 

 one hundred and fifty chicks. 



The method employed by the Emperor penguin for carrying 

 the egg and chick upon his feet is shared also by the King penguin 

 of the sub-Antarctic area, as we saw in our visit to their rookeries 

 in the Macquarie Islands. The King penguin we saw as he sat in 

 mud and puddles, with his single egg upon his feet, and now we 

 saw the Emperor penguin doing precisely the same thing with his 

 single chicken to keep it off the ice ; and we are agreed that the 

 term ' pouch,' which has been used in this connection, is one which 

 not only does not describe the matter, but is anatomically wrong 

 and misleading. The single egg, or the chick, sits resting on the 

 dorsum of the foot, wedged in between the legs and the lower 

 abdomen ; and over it falls a fold of heavily feathered skin, which 

 is very loose, and can completely cover up and hide the egg or 

 chick from view. When the chick is hungry or inquisitive it pokes 

 out from under the maternal (or paternal) lappet a piebald downy 

 head of black and white, emitting its shrill and persistent pipe 

 until the mother (or the father) fills it up. 



The feeding is managed as with cormorants and many other 

 birds, the little one finding regurgitated food when it thrusts its 

 head inside the parent's mouth. 



I think the chickens hate their parents, and when one watches 

 the proceedings in a rookery it strikes one as not surprising. In 

 the first place there is about one chick to ten or twelve adults, and 

 each adult has an overpowering desire to ' sit ' on something. 

 Both males and females want to nurse, and the result is that when 

 a chicken finds himself alone there is a rush on the part of a dozen 

 unemployed to seize him. Naturally he runs away, and dodges 

 here and there till a six-stone Emperor falls on him, and then 

 begins a regular football ' scrimmage,' in which each tries to hustle 

 the other off, and the end is too often disastrous to the chick. 

 Sometimes he falls into a crack in the ice and stays there to be 

 frozen while the parents squabble at the top ; sometimes, rather 

 than be nursed I have seen him crawl in under an ice-ledge and 

 remain there, where the old ones could not reach him. I think it is 

 not an exaggeration to say that of the J 7 per cent, that die no less 

 than half are killed by kindness. 



This excessive desire to 'sit' on something leads otten to the 



