INTRODUCTION xliti 
companies waiting on the ice at the actual water’s edge, 
with some hundred more tailing out in single file to join 
them. The birds were waiting far out at the edge of the 
open water, as far as it was possible for them to walk, on 
a projecting piece of ice, the very next piece that would 
break away and drift to the north. The line of tracks in the 
snow along which the birds had gone the day before was 
now cut off short at the edge of the open water, showing 
that they had gone, and under the ice-cliffs there was an 
appreciable diminution in the number of Emperors left, 
hardly more than half remaining of all that we had seen 
there six days before.’’ } 
Two days later the emigration was still in full swing, 
but only the unemployed seemed to have gone as yet. 
Those who were nursing chicks were still huddled under 
the ice-cliffs, sheltered as much as possible from the storm. 
Three days later (October 28) no ice was to be seen in the 
Ross Sea: the little bay of ice was gradually being eaten 
away: the same exodus was in progress and only a remnant 
of penguins was still left. 
Of the conditions under which the Emperor lays her 
eggs, the darkness and cold and blighting winds, of the ex- 
cessive mothering instinct implanted in the heart of every 
bird, male and female, of the mortality and gallant struggles 
against almost inconceivable odds, and the final survival of 
some 26 per cent of the eggs, I hope to tell in the account 
of our Winter Journey, the object of which was to throw 
light upon the development of the embryo of this remark- 
able bird, and through it upon the history of their ances- 
tors. As Wilson wrote: 
“The possibility that we have in the Emperor penguin 
the nearest approach to a primitive form not only of a pen- 
guin but of a bird makes the future working out of its 
embryology a matter of the greatest possible importance. 
It was a great disappointment to us that although we dis- 
covered their breeding-ground, and although we were able 
to bring home a number of deserted eggs and chicks, we 
were not able to procure a series of early embryos by which 
1 Wilson, Nat. Ant. Exp., 1901-1904, “ Zoology,” Part ii. pp. 8-9. 
