AVES SPHENISCID^E. IOI 



birds, unless I had seen them to my astonishment thus make on shore. 

 I had subsequently much opportunity of watching their habits. 



"We landed on the beach; it was bounded along its whole stretch at 

 this point by a dense growth of tussock. The tussock (Spartina arzindi- 

 nacea], is a stout coarse reed-like grass; it grows in large clumps, which 

 have at their base large masses of hard woody matter, formed of the bases 

 of old stems and roots. 



"In penguin rookeries, the grass covers wide tracts with a dense 

 growth, like that of a field of standing corn, but denser and higher, the 

 grass reaching high over one's head. 



"On the beach were to be seen various groups of penguins, either 

 coming from or going to the sea. There is only one species of penguin 

 in the Tristan group: this is, Eiidyptes saltator, or the 'well diving 

 jumper.' The birds stand about a foot and a half high ; they are covered, 

 as are all penguins, with a thick coating of close set feathers, like the 

 grebe's feathers, that muffs are made of. They are slate grey on the back 

 and head, snow white on the whole front, and from the sides of the head 

 projects backwards on each side a tuft of sulphur yellow plumes. The 

 tufts lie close to the head when the bird is swimming or diving, but they 

 are erected when it is on shore, and seem then almost by their varied 

 posture, to be used in the expression of emotions, such as inquisitiveness 

 and anger. 



"The bill of the penguin is bright red, and very strong and sharp at 

 the point, as our legs testified before the day was over ; the iris is also red. 

 The penguin's iris is remarkably sensitive to light. When one of the birds 

 was standing in our 'work room' on board the ship with one side of its 

 head turned towards the port, and the other away from the light, the 

 pupil on the one side was contracted almost to a speck, whilst widely di- 

 lated on the other. . . . The birds are subject to great variations in the 

 amount of light they use for vision, since they feed at sea at night as well 

 as in the day time. 



"Most of the droves of penguins made for one landing-place, where the 

 beach surface was covered with a coating of dirt from their feet, forming 

 a broad tract, leading to a lane in the tall grass about a yard wide at the 

 bottom, and quite bare, with a smoothly beaten black roadway ; this was 

 the entrance to the main street of this part of the 'rookery,' for so these 

 penguin establishments are called. 



