ADELIE PENGUIN—LEVICK. 
17 
stranded by the sea along the shores of the rookery. These fragments of bergs, some 
of them fifteen feet or so in height, have formed a miniature mountain-ranee along the 
shore. All day, and every day, parties of penguins are to be seen assiduously climbing 
the steep sides of this little range. Time after time they get half way, and have 
to descend to try a different route. Frequently, having with much pains scaled a 
slippery incline, one is seen to miss his footing, and come shding down to the bottom 
again, only to pick himself up and have another try. 
This climbing was generally undertaken by small parties who had clubbed together, 
as they generally do, from social inclination. Sometimes a little band of climbers 
would take an hour or more in finding a way to the summit, if they had chosen a 
difficult place. Arrived at the top, they would spend a variable period there, some- 
times descending at once, sometimes spending a considerable time there, gazing 
contentedly about them, or peering over the edge to chatter at other parties below. 
Again, about half a mile from the beach, a large berg, some 100 feet in height, 
was grounded in fairly deep water; it was accessible at first over the sea-ice, but later, 
when this had gone, was surrounded by open water. Its sides were sheer except on one 
side which sloped steeply from the water's edge to the top. From the time when they 
first went to the sea to feed, until the end of the season, there was a continual stream 
of penguins ascending and descending this berg.. As I watched them through glasses, 
I saw that they had worn deep paths in the snow from base to summit. They had 
absolutely nothing to gain by going to all this trouble but the pleasure they seemed to 
derive from the climb, and when at the top merely had a good look round and came 
down again. 
When the stream of penguins was pouring into the rookery at the beginning of 
the season, I kept a look-out for those who were to nest up the cliff, and several times 
saw birds, on arriving at the rookery, make for the heights without any hesitation, 
threading their way almost in a straight line through the nests to the screes at the 
bottom of the cliff, and up there to one or other of the paths leading up its side. 
Probably these birds had been hatched there, or had nested there before, and were 
making for their old haunts, and I suppose they must have found mates when they 
got there. 
But this lack of hesitation in making for a certain spot gives rise to some 
interesting speculation, because if one sex made for a particular nesting-site, why not 
the other, in which case cock and hen who had mated the previous year would meet 
again, and so possibly in many cases the same pairs may mate year after year, should 
both survive. 
Battles took place up these heights, as they did below, and many times we saw 
one of the combatants, knocked off his feet, roll bumping down the slope from ledge 
to ledge until he recovered his footing, only to climb straight to the spot he had left. 
and give fresh battle to his opponent. 
