704 PENGUIN 



known, first given, as in Here's "Voyage to Cape Breton," 1536 

 (Hackluyt, Researches, iii. pp. 168-170), to one inhabiting the seas 

 of Newfoundland, which subsequently became known as the Great 

 Auk or GARE-FOWL ; and, though the French equivalent Pingouin l 

 preserves its old application, at the present day, the word Penguin 

 is by English ornithologists always used in a general sense for 

 certain Birds inhabiting the Southern Ocean, called by the French 

 Manchots, the Sphenisddse of ornithologists, which in some respects 

 form perhaps the most singular group of the whole Class, or at least 

 we may say of the Carinatas. For a long while their position was 

 very much misunderstood, some of the best of recent or even living 

 systematists having placed them in close company with the Alcidx 

 (AUKS), to which they bear only a relationship of analogy, as indeed 

 had been perceived by a few ornithologists, who recognized in the 

 Penguins a very distinct Order, IMPENNES. The view of the latter 

 is hardly likely to be disputed in future, now that the anatomical 

 researches of MM. Paul Gervais and Alix (Jaurn. de Zool. 1877, pp. 

 424-470), M. Filhol (Bull Soc. Philomath, ser. 7, vi. pp. 226-248), 

 and above all of Prof. Watson (Zoology, Voy. Challenger, part xviii.) 

 have put the independent position of the Sphenisddse in the clearest 

 light. 2 The most conspicuous outward character presented by the 

 Penguins is the total want of quills in their wings, which are beside 



" pin- winging." In opposition to the first of these hypotheses it has been urged 

 (1) that there is no real evidence of any Welsh discovery of the bird, (2) that it 

 is very unlikely for the "Welsh, if they did discover it, to have been able to pass 

 on their name to English navigators, and (3) that it had not a white head, but 

 only a patch of white thereon. To the second hypothesis Prof. Skeat (Etymol. 

 Diet. p. 433) objects that it "will not account for the suffix -in, and is therefore 

 wrong ; besides which the ' Dutchmen ' [who were asserted to be the" authors of 

 the name] turn out to be Sir Francis Drake " and his men. In support of the 

 third hypothesis Mr. Reeks wrote (Zoologist, ser. 2, p. 1854) that the people in 

 Newfoundland who used to meet with this bird always pronounced its name 

 "Pin-wing." Prof. Skeat's enquiry (loc. cit.}, whether the name may not after 

 all be South-American, is to be answered in the negative, since, so far as evidence 

 goes, it was given to the North- American bird before the South-American was 

 known in Europe. 



1 Gorfou has also been used by some French writers, being a corruption of 

 Geirfugl or Gare-fowl. 



2 Though I cannot wholly agree with Prof. Watson's conclusions, his remarks 

 (pp. 230-232) on the " Origin of the Penguins" are worthy of all attention. He 

 considers that they are the surviving members of a group that branched off 

 early from the primitive "avian" stem, but that at the time of their separation 

 the stem had diverged so far from Reptiles as to possess true wings, though the 

 metatarsal bones had not lost their distinctness and become fused into the single 

 bone so characteristic of existing Bird^. The ancestral Penguin, he argues, must 

 have had functional wings, the muscles of which, through atrophy, have been 

 converted into non-contractile tendinous bands, and this view agrees practically 

 with that taken by Prof. Fiirbringer and Dr. Gadow. 



