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“TERRA NOVA” EXPEDITION, 
from the rookery, frequently both would stop, and the clean and the dirty mingle 
together and chatter with one another for some minutes. If they were not speaking 
words in some language of their own their whole appearance belied them, and as they 
stood, some in pairs, some in groups of three or more, chatting amiably together, it 
became evident that they were sociable animals, glad to meet one another, and like 
many men, pleased with the excuse to forget for a while their duties at home, where 
their mates were waiting to be relieved for their own spell off the nests. After a 
variable period of this intercourse, the two parties would separate and continue on their 
respective ways, a clean stream issuing from the crowd in the direction of the rookery, 
a dirty one heading off towards the open water, but here it was seen that a few of 
those who had bathed and fed, and were already perhaps half-way home, had been 
persuaded to turn and accompany the others, and so back they would all go, over the 
way they had come, to spend a few more hours in skylarking and splashing about in 
the sea. 
On this strip of sea-ice the penguins would spend hours, and, gathered in small 
parties, play a sort of ‘touch last.” Games of this sort are often seen to be played by 
the young of different species of mammalia, but I believe that among birds they are, at 
any rate, uncommon. 
Another very favourite game of theirs is worth recording. 
The tide in the vicinity of the rookery flowed at a considerable rate (some six 
knots at times), and on it there drifted a succession of ice-floes of different sizes. As 
one of these floes arrived at the top end of the rookery it would be boarded by a party 
of Adélies, who sometimes crowded on to it until it would hold no more. The 
“excursion boat,” as we got into the habit of calling it, borne by the stream, would 
then drift the whole length of the rookery, its occupants showing every sign of 
enjoyment in the ride. Sometimes they stood silently contemplating the scenes on the 
ice-foot as they were borne past them; at others, especially when passing close to the 
shore, they would shout remarks to the other penguins that stood on the ice-edge, who 
would in turn shout back at them, so that a running fire of chaff seemed to pass 
between those on the bank and those on the floe as the crowded “ excursion steamer ” 
passed on its way. 
Occasionally a knot of penguins who stood hesitating on the shore, on being 
shouted at by those on the floe, would make up their minds suddenly, and all plunge 
into the sea and swim off to the floe to board it; and if, as often happened, it were 
already crowded, many of those on the floe would be pushed off one side, as the fresh 
party boarded it on the other. 
Arrived at the lower end of the rookery, every bird would suddenly plunge into 
the tide and swim all the way back against the stream, only to board a fresh floe for 
another ride down. Some of them must have spent many hours of the day in this 
mannet. 
During the nesting-season, at any rate, the clubbing of the penguins into parties 
