io8 



PLATE LV. EMPEROR PENGUINS. 



FIG. 1. From a photograph by C. R. ROYDS (R. x, 5" x 4" film), Oct. 18, 1902; 

 taken on the sea-ice at Cape Crozier. 



FIG. 2. From a photograph by R. W. SKELTON (Sk. 186, |-plate), Oct. 18, 1902; 

 taken on the sea-ice at Cape Crozier, looking toward the disturbed area 

 of pressure ridges. 



Both pictures were taken at the Emperor Penguin rookery. The birds are 

 standing upon sea-ice, and the groups are part of the breeding colony. One egg 

 only is laid, and apparently only one bird in ten or twelve succeeds in laying, so 

 that the greater majority are unemployed. They are not, however, altogether idle, 

 for it appears that they all take turns at "sitting," handing over the egg or the 

 chick to another nurse when hunger becomes pressing. As they live on fish it is 

 necessary for them to enter the water, and this they do by means of natural cracks 

 and Seals' blow-holes, which are hardly ever absent in the neighbourhood of 

 Cape Crozier. 



A short while before our visit in 1903 there evidently had been a fall of ice 

 from the overhanging ice-cliffs while the birds were incubating their eggs. This so 

 scared the " sitters " that many of them dropped their eggs and fled, and these were 

 almost immediately frozen. To this accident we owe it that we became the 

 possessors of about a dozen eggs, the first that had been found, except the single 

 weathered "Drayton" egg, which was brought home by the Dumont D'Urville 

 Expedition in 1840. 



See Nat. Hist. Rep., vol. i., Aves, p. 28. 



