THE EMPEROR PENGUIN. 11 
onset we calculated that there were over a thousand Emperors in the bay ; when it 
abated we calculated that there were about four hundred adults and from twenty-five 
to thirty living chicks. What went on during the storm we were luckily able to see, 
and what we saw gave us the clue to the sudden disappearance of all Emperors, young 
and old, from the bay by November 8th, when Lieutenant Royds made his second visit 
to the spot in 1902. Had we possessed food and fuel enough we should have remained 
encamped on this spot to see the remnant carry out their migration, but our return to 
the ship was already overdue and our food and fuel had almost come to an end. So 
we had perforce to leave and make our way back. We took with us the oldest chicken 
we could find in the rookery, in case the chick we had left at the ship might have died 
during our absence, and we hoped that we might soon be able to watch the natal moult 
in progress. With our departure from the rookery on November 2nd our observations 
on the Emperor’s breeding habits came to an end. No further visits were possible, as 
all hands on the ship, both officers and men, were requisitioned for the ice saws in 
McMurdo Sound to cut a channel for the ship’s release. 
We now, however, knew a good many of the habits of this bird, and they are 
eccentric to a degree rarely met with even in Ornithology. First, in choosing the 
darkest months of the Antarctic winter in which to incubate its eggs, which are laid 
probably in the first week of July. Then, not only in the choice of season for its 
nesting, but of place. It must needs lay its single egg upon sea-ice with no pretence at 
nesting, removing the egg at once from the surface of the ice to rest upon its own feet. 
There it holds it wedged in between the legs closely pressed to a patch of bare skin in 
the lower abdomen, and covered from exposure to the cold by a loose falling lappet of 
abdominal skin and feathers. 
That this method which the King, in common with the Emperor Penguin, has of 
holding the egg on its feet, covered up by what is nothing but a fold of abdominal skin, 
should ever have been described as the “ pouching ” of its egg is much to be regretted. 
The term “ pouch” is wholly misleading in this connection, not only anatomically 
but from a purely descriptive point of view. There is no pouch of any sort or kind 
into which the egg is placed, it is merely held upon the feet to keep it from actual 
contact with the ice or ground, and covered up by a loose and thickly-feathered 
fold of skin to keep it warm (see fig. 8, p. 14; also figs. 9, 10, p. 16). 
On the sea-ice, therefore, the Emperor stands waiting for the egg to hatch. But as 
there is no such thing to be found in September asa bird half-starved or in poor condition, 
all being fat and in perfect plumage, it is obvious that the same bird does not sit on 
the same egg for seven weeks. It would appear that the incubation is carried out not 
by one bird only, nor by a single pair, but by a dozen or more, which stand patiently 
waiting round for a chance to seize either a chicken or an egg as the post of incubator 
becomes vacant ; every adult bird, both male and female, in the whole rookery has a 
keen desire to “sit” on something. Certainly not more than one egg, and so one 
chicken, is produced to every ten or twelve adults, though why this should be the case is 
VOL, II. G 
