12 EDWARD A. WILSON. 
more than one can say ; possibly it is a condition of things evolved in an exacting climate, 
to allow each adult to obtain sufficient food through so long a period of incubation. 
Not only do the barren females take their turn with the hens that lay the eggs, 
but the male birds also help, and so every individual, whether male or female, has the 
same bare patch of skin in the median line of the lower part of the abdomen against 
which the egg is closely held for warmth. What we actually saw again and again was 
the wild dash made by a dozen adults, each weighing anything up to 90 lbs., to take 
possession of any chicken that happened to find itself deserted on the ice. It can be 
compared to nothing better than a football “scrimmage,” in which the first bird to 
seize the chicken is hustled and worried on all sides by the others while it rapidly tries 
to push the infant in between its legs with the help of its pointed beak, shrugging 
up the loose skin of the abdomen the while to cover it. Although the transfer of the 
egg was never actually seen, there is every reason to believe that when the sitting bird 
feels hungry it hands over its treasure to the nearest neighbour that will undertake the 
duty of incubation. 
That no great care is taken to save the chick from injury is obvious from an 
examination of the dead ones lying on the ice. All had rents and claw marks in the 
skin, and we saw this not only in the dead but in the living. The chicks are fully 
alive to the inconvenience of being fought for by so many clumsy nurses, and I have 
seen them not only make the best use of their legs in avoiding so much attention, but 
even crawl in under a ledge of ice where the old birds could not follow them, and there 
remain to starve and freeze in preference to being nursed. Undoubtedly, I think that 
of the 77 per cent. that die before they shed their down, quite half are killed by 
kindness. Once caught and tucked away the chicken appears to be very comfortable, 
but the process of changing hands, which must take place fairly often, is full of danger. 
Often enough the chick is almost smothered by the struggles of the heavy birds above 
it; often enough, too, its skin is torn by beak and claw, and from time to time it will 
be found to have dropped down a crack in the ice, where it remains to freeze in the 
sludge while the birds dispute its possession just above, not one of them having the 
sense to help it out of its dangerous position. It is not wonderful, therefore, that a 
very large proportion come to grief, and the season of the year in which the unhappy 
chicken is forced to emerge from its egg-shell undoubtedly tends to increase the 
enormous death-rate. 
A glance at the mean temperatures for each month of the year in this region (see 
pp. 117 and 118) will show at once that the Emperor Penguin chick which is hatched 
at the end of August has to face, in the first few weeks of its life, the lowest tempera- 
tures of the whole Antarctic year. The mean of the two Septembers of 1902 and 1903 
was —12° F, and —18°7° F., and thermometers within a few miles of the rookery in 
that month recorded — 63° F. and even — 68°F. upon the Barrier. 
The question that naturally arises from an infant mortality of 77 per cent. is whether 
or no the breed of Emperor Penguins is dying out. From all that we saw and from all 
