ANTARCTIC ADVENTURE AND RESEARCH 



emitting its shrill and persistent pipe until the parent 

 fills it up! Wilson's account of the life of a penguin 

 chick cannot be improved upon. 



I think the chickens hate their parents, and when one 

 watches the proceedings in a rookery it strikes one as not 

 surprising. In the first place there is about one chick to 

 ten or twelve adults and each adult has an overpowering 

 desire to **sit" on something. Both males and females 

 want to nurse, and the result is that when a chicken finds 

 himself alone there is a rush on the part of a dozen unem- 

 ployed to seize him. Naturally he runs away and dodges 

 here and there until a six-stone emperor falls on him, and 

 then begins a regular football scrimmage in which each 

 tries to hustle the other of¥, and the end is too often dis- 

 astrous to the chick. Sometimes he falls into a crack in 

 the ice, and stays there to be frozen while the parents 

 squabble at the top; sometimes rather than be nursed I 

 have seen him crawl in under an ice-ledge and remain 

 there where the old ones could not reach him. I think it 

 is not an exaggeration to say that of the yy per cent that 

 die, no less than half are killed by kindness. 



The young bird moves out to the breaking floe and 

 soon floats out to sea. His first feather plumage ap- 

 pears in January when he is five months old. Then 

 the silver gray changes to blue gray with a w^hite front. 

 A year later a second moult occurs and then the orange 

 patch appears on the neck, and the head and throat turn 

 black. His food consists of fish which he catches 

 readily in his sharp beak. In the water these quaint 

 birds swim like Plesiosaurs, or at any rate not like 



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