VOL. LVIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 517 



mere shafts. Four toes on each foot, 3 of which are webbed, the 4th loose, and 

 standing forward. 



1. The Patagonian Pinguin. 

 Size. The length of the stuffed skin was 4 feet 3 inches; and the bulk of the 

 body seemed superior to that of a swan. Bill. — Four inches and a half long; 

 slender, straight, bending only on the end of the upper mandible, black, covered 

 on each side the base with soft short brown feathers, the sides of the lower man- 

 dible compressed, the lower part or base orange-coloured, the end dusky. No 

 nostrils. Tongue. — Half the length of the bill, and singularly armed with strong 

 sharp spikes pointed backwards. Plumage. — The most remarkable of all the 

 feathered tribe, each feather lying over the other, with the compactness of the 

 scales of fish; their texture is equally extraordinary; the shafts broad and very 

 thin ; the veins unwebbed ; the head, throat, and hind part of the neck, are of 

 a deep brown colour; from each side of the head to the middle of the fore part 

 of the neck are two lines of bright yellow, broad above, narrow beneath, and 

 uniting half way down ; thence the same colour widens towards the breast, fading 

 away till it is lost in pure white, of which colour is the whole under side of the 

 body, a dusky line dividing it from the colour of the upper part ; the whole back 

 is of a very deep cinereous colour, almost dusky ; but the end of each feather is 

 marked with a coerulean spot, those about the junction of the wings larger and 

 paler than the others. Wings. — Are extremely short in respect to the bulk of the 

 bird, hang down, and have rather the appearance of fins, whose office they per- 

 form ; their length is only 14 inches; on the outside they are dusky, and co- 

 vered with scale-like feathers, or at best with such whose shafts are so broad and 

 fiat as scarcely to be distinguished from scales ; those on the ridge of the wings 

 consisting entirely of shaft; the larger or quill feathers have some very short 

 webs. Tail. — Consists of 30 brown feathers, or rather thin shafts, resembling 

 split whale-bone, fiat on their upper side, concave on the under, and the webs 

 short, unconnected, bristly. Legs and Feet. — From the knees to the end of 

 the claws inches, covered with strong pentangular black scales; the fore-toe 

 scarcely an inch long, and the others so remarkably short, as to evince the ne- 

 cessity of that strength of the tail, which seems intended as a support to the bird 

 in its erect attitude ; in the same manner as that of the wood-pecker is when it 

 clings to the; sides of trees; between the toes is a strong semilunar membrane, 



• The species of Pinguin here described, is the Apteuodyta Patachonica of the Gmelian edition 

 of the Systema Naturae. The figure here given (as Mr. Pennant himself has elsewhere observed) 

 does not properly express the general attitude of the bird, which is usually seen with the neck at 

 rest, or drawn down close to the shoulders, as expressed in the small plate of the same species in 

 Mr. Pennant's Genera of Birds, and in the magnificent figure in Miller's plates of Natural History, 

 republished under the tide of Cimelia Physica. 



