II.] ANTARCTIC FAUNA 373 



most pathetic sights. One may see quite frequently an old bird 

 go up to one of the numerous dead chickens lying about upon the 

 ice, and try to coax it to sit upon its feet, helping the lifeless little 

 thing with its beak, in evident distress at the total lack of response 

 to its attention. One may see quite frequently the head and neck 

 of a chicken trailing limp and lifeless from under the feather lappet 

 of a broody bird ; and most, if not all, the chicks that are lying 

 dead upon the ice bear marks of having first been torn in life 

 during the quarrels of the adults for their possession, and then of 

 having been nursed persistently after death. 



Some of the chickens, of course, survive and leave the rookery, 

 and, thanks to a spell of real Antarctic weather, which for eight 

 days out of eleven confined us to our sleeping-bags, we were 

 enabled to guess how this is managed. 



During an interminable blizzard we laid out guiding-posts with 

 our ski, ski-poles, ice-axes, and a length of Alpine rope, which 

 made it possible for us every alternate day to visit the edge of the 

 cliffs that overlooked the rookery ; and here we saw how these 

 birds have come to make use of inanimate nature to serve their 

 ends. They wanted to migrate. They saw that the sea-ice was 

 breaking up and drifting to the north, and they knew that their 

 chicks were as yet in down, and not fit to enter water. So day by 

 day as we watched them we saw parties of a hundred birds or 

 more making their way in single file out from the sheltered bay to 

 the edge of the open water. And here they stood and waited 

 deliberately till the floe broke off and carried them northward to 

 the pack. 



The pack-ice, I have now no doubt, is the great Antarctic 

 nursery for the young of the Southern seals and penguins. Here 

 they live in comparative safety. One finds here young Emperor 

 penguins and the young of the Adelie penguins, and one finds them 

 apparently nowhere else when once they have left their breeding- 

 grounds. 



Food is abundant and they are safe from the surf and swell ot 

 the heaviest storms ; shelter they can find easily under a berg or 

 hummock, and here the young Emperor proceeds to moult his 

 down. 



His first feather plumage appears in January, when he is five 

 months old ; the silver-grey down is changed for a blue-grey coat 

 with a white front ; there is as yet no colour to relieve it. But 

 a year later a second moult occurs, and then the orange patch 



