On Some Antarctic Birds. 233 



temperatures constantly as low as — 40° F., and occasionally 

 even as low as —67° F. 



But it has to weather worse than cold and climate, for each 

 time it changes hands it runs the risk of being* done to death 

 in the scrimmage for possession which follows from the over- 

 powering- desire to brood implanted in the breasts of a dozen 

 unemployed adults, each weighing- some 70, 80, or even 90 lbs. 

 In this scrimmage the chicken in many cases comes off second 

 best, and not only has its skin rent by the claws of the parents, 

 but is certainly so often badly damaged as to shortly die. 

 In this way, taking an average for the two years during- which 

 we observed them, we found that no less than 77 per cent, 

 of the chickens hatched were dead before they had shed their 

 down . 



Such a mortality seems incredible, but was the result of a 

 careful count of dead chickens tying on the ice. 



This nursery then remains intact until the sea ice breaks 

 up, that is, until about the end of the first week in November ; 

 and it was during* the spring gales of 1903 while we were laid 

 up in our tent and sleeping* bags for no less than eight days 

 out of eleven that we were able to watch and surmise how the 

 exodus of chickens still in down was managed. 



Each day a squad of Penguins, a hundred at a time, seeing 

 the ice break up with the south- westerly blizzard, used to go 

 and wait at the edge of the ice by the open water till the piece 

 on which they stood broke off and drifted up with them to the 

 pack ice further north. 



There seems to be no doubt that these birds make use of 

 the general break up of the sea ice in the early summer to 

 transfer their nestlings still in down and unfit to enter the 

 water, to the northern belt of pack ice. Here, of course, we 

 could not follow them, for we ourselves were in the ice, held 

 fast till three months later, but in January when on our way 

 down south through this very belt of pack (and others have 

 noted this also) we found young Emperors about two-thirds 

 grown, then fully feathered, but with the grey heads and 

 white throats of immaturity. 



That other rookeries exist along the edge of the Great Ice 

 Barrier, and in King Edward's Land as well, there cannot be 



Q 



