Penguin Rookeries 95 



and attend to the needs of the young with great care until they are able to shift 

 for themselves. Notwithstanding this extreme care for the preservation of the 

 young birds, Gould tells us that heavy gales of wind frequently destroy them in 

 great numbers, hundreds occasionally being found dead on the beach after a 

 storm. When sitting on the eggs or brooding the young, the old birds sit closely 

 and if approached too near resent the intrusion with their powerful, sharp bills 

 and are capable of inflicting severe .wounds. 



Penguin Rookeries. Moseley gives Jhe following graphic account of his 

 visit to a large colony of Rock-hoppers: "You plunge into one of the lanes in 

 the tall grass which at once shuts the surroundings from your view. The stench 

 is overpowering, the yelling of the birds perfectly terrifying. The nests are 

 placed so thickly that you cannot help treading on eggs and young birds at 

 almost every step. A parent bird sits on each nest, with its sharp beak erect 

 and open, ready to bite, yelling savagely, \Caa, Caa, Urr, Urr,' its red eyes 

 gleaming, and its plumes at half cock, quivering with rage. No sooner are your 

 legs within reach than they are furiously bitten, often by two or three birds at 

 once. At first you try to avoid the nests, but soon find that impossible; then 

 maddened almost by the pain, stench, and noise, you have recourse to brutality." 

 Their gregarious habits and their inability to escape when on land have caused 

 them to be greatly persecuted by man, as both eggs and birds are eagerly sought 

 as food; for while neither birds nor eggs have a very delicate flavor, they are 

 nevertheless a welcome addition to the larder after a long sea- voyage, and re- 

 cently the Swedish and other South Polar expeditions were forced for many 

 months to subsist almost entirely on their flesh and eggs. It was persecution 

 of this kind, it will be recalled, that led to the extermination of the Great 

 Auk, and from all accounts the Penguins are becoming sadly depleted in many 

 of their breeding grounds. 



As regards size there is considerable range, from the Blue Penguin (Eudyptula 

 minor} of Australia and New Zealand, which is only about sixteen inches in 

 length, to the Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytesforstertyvi the shores of the Antarctic 

 continent, which has a length of forty-eight inches and a weight, according to 

 Ross, Nordenskiold, and others, of sixty to seventy-eight pounds. The length 

 of the various species is between sixteen and forty-eight inches, the average 

 being about thirty inches. 



That the Penguins represent a group of great antiquity is shown by the dis- 

 covery of numerous fossil remains as well as by the apparently primitive character 

 of certain structural elements. The oldest known fossil form (Palceeudyptes 

 antarcticus] is found in the Eocene of New Zealand, and according to Hector, 

 was of gigantic size, standing between six and seven feet in height, although 

 other authorities would make it no more than five feet. In any event it was 

 considerably larger than the largest living species, and it had a proportionately 

 longer wing, yet all of the important skeletal modifications had been already 

 acquired. Within the past few years, thanks largely to the revival of Antarctic 

 exploration, no less than thirty-one nominal fossil species belonging to nineteen 

 genera have been described, of which number five genera and species were 



