232 Edward A. Wilson : 



journeys at different times to collect tacts and make obser- 

 vations, which together build up one of the most quaint life- 

 histories imaginable. 



Arriving at this rookery in the early days of spring, in 

 September, the coldest month of the whole Antarctic year, 

 we found to our surprise that the eggs were already hatched. 

 Indeed, had it not been for a happy accident, our collection of 

 this hitherto unknown egg would have been very incomplete. 



It so happened, however, that during incubation, which 

 must occupy about seven weeks, and which, therefore, must 

 commence very early in July, in the <<>ld and darkness of 

 mid-winter, there had been a fall of ice from the cliffs 

 beneath which the sitting birds were collected on the sea ice 

 of the frozen bay. 



This fall had so scared them that many birds left their 

 eggs, and many, no doubt, were also buried in the débris. 

 Those eggs that were left we found, frozen and deserted; and 

 a series of fourteen, very variable in size, but all of a pyriform 

 shape, and with a whitish chalky surface, now lies in the 

 British Museiun of Natural History. 



The story of the Emperor Penguin nursery is quaint, and 

 not a little pathetic. There is one chicken hatched to 

 every dozen adults, and each adult is possessed with an 

 intense desire to nurse this chicken. Which bird laid the 

 egg, or incubated it, or to which bird the resultant chicken 

 rightly belongs, is a matter of no concern to any one, for 

 where might is right the present owner is the nurse, and until 

 driven by hunger to leave the chicken to another, either he 

 or she — for both act as " sitting hens " — takes care to keep 

 the chicken off the ice by holding it upon the feet, tucked in 

 between the legs, and covered by a fold of loose skin and 

 feathers from the abdomen. 



This method of holding the chicken and the egg is common 

 to the Emperor and the King. The object with the former 

 is to prevent contact with the ice, and with the latter to keep 

 the chicken dry in the wet and muddy quagmire wherein the 

 King Penguins squat during incubation. 



Allowing, then, that the Emperor Penguin chicken has been 

 hatched at the end of August, it has to weather a month of 



