Vol. XVI. -I 

 1916 J 



TuLLOCH, Macquarie Island Penguins. 



95 



three-quarters of a million birds. At The Nuggets, where the 

 Royals are slaughtered, the area is at least 10 acres, containing 

 over half a million birds. They are so thick in the rookeries that 

 you have to kick your way through them. At the foot of The 

 Nuggets Gully, where these birds go to and fro from the sea, I 

 counted them passing a point at the rate of 150 each way per 

 minute. This continues in the season for about ten to fifteen 

 hours a day. 



There are about 150,000 birds killed every season at The 

 Nuggets, but the annual increase would be about 40 per cent, to 

 50 per cent, in sjMte of this. and. as I stated, this is the only part 



The Sea-Leopard, an Enemy of the Penguins, Macquarie Island. 



at present where they are molested. The first oil season com- 

 mences about the beginning of January and lasts for three weeks, 

 until the old go to sea. In February both the old and the previous 

 year's young (which are very fat) return in great numbers to 

 moult. This time they are detained on the beach as far as 

 possible by the sealers, who put wire-netting across the creek. 

 Flocks of birds are driven into a wire-netting enclosure, and the 

 young, fat birds are drafted off and clubbed and put into a digester. 

 This is about the most humane and only practical way of killing 

 the birds, and I found the headman very particular about killing 

 the birds. I think the oil industry at the present scale has very 



