268 PENGUINS. 



With a cord tied round its leg, to prevent its escape, 

 it was permitted to sport in the water; but even with 

 this restraint, which must have very much impeded 

 its motions, it performed the motions of diving and 

 swimming with a speed that set all pursuit from a 

 boat at defiance, affording the most convincing proof 

 that, had it been at full liberty, no fish could have 

 escaped. 



The Aptenodytes, which may be called southern 

 Penguins, as they never come beyond the limits of 

 the Southern Ocean, are very numerous on the lonely 

 isles scattered over the dreary wilderness of those 

 seas. The largest of these, the King Penguin, ex- 

 ceeds a Goose in size. As their legs project from 

 their bodies in the same direction with their tails, 

 they walk upright; and when a flock of them are 

 seen moving in file, or arranged along the ledges of 

 the rocks, they appear like a company of soldiers; 

 for they hold their heads very high, with stretched 

 necks, while their little flappers project like two 

 arms. As the feathers on their breasts are beauti- 

 fully white, with a line of black running across the 

 crop, they have been by others compared to a row of 

 children, with white aprons tied round their waists 

 with black strings. 



The great Albatross, as we have seen, spends 

 the chief part of his life on the wing; the King 

 Penguin, on the other hand, rarely quits the 

 water, with the exception of the breeding-season, 

 when, in some places, though not always, as 

 we shall see in our account of the Albatross, in 

 Tristan d'Acunha, both unite in vast flocks, and peo- 

 ple the rugged rocks for a time. When a sufficient 



