THE EMPEROR PENGUIN. 15 
enter the water for their food. Probably during the whole winter there is never a day 
on which a mile or two of travel on the ice would not bring them to an opening of 
this kind. 
If, again, the set of the ice drift be easterly, there will be an open pool of water 
under the lee of every cape along the ice cliffs ; and, vice versd, if the set be westerly, 
there will be pools on the eastern side of all the bigger capes ; and one realises, on skin- 
ning an Emperor Penguin, that the very substantial layer of fat beneath its skin, quite 
indispensable in such a climate, can only be maintained by a constant and abundant 
take of food at all times. The season of the year when this layer of fat is most ample 
is, as one would expect, toward the end of the summer months and before the moult, 
when the new feathers underneath the skin will be found embedded in a mass of fat 
at least an inch in depth all over. This layer is much reduced by the growth of the 
new feathers and by the period of starvation necessarily undergone during the moult, 
when nothing will induce the birds to enter the water. 
The fish which forms the Emperor Penguin’s staple diet is a small silvery species 
of from 4 to 6 inches in length; the crustaceans were mainly Euphausie and 
schizopods, while the cephalopods were of considerable size, a foot or two in length 
judging by their beaks. The pebbles were no doubt of use in the trituration of the fish 
bones and the harder parts of the crustaceans’ shells. They were always present, in 
the young and in the old, and were found even in the stomach of a chick which could 
only have emerged from the egg a day or so before. Exactly where the pebbles come 
from is not at first sight evident, seeing that the birds are never seen on land. 
Probably they are picked up at the bottom of the shallow seas, or some of them may 
be found on floating glacier-ice. Much grit and gravel, even of a considerable size, is 
blown some distance on to sea-ice from the neighbouring coast-line. It may be 
that this affords the birds the supply they need. Occasionally the stones are passed 
with the excreta, and may be found in the radiating pattern which is left upon the ice 
floes where a company of Emperor Penguins has huddled together for warmth and rest 
in their spring and autumn wanderings. 
These wanderings are worthy of a note in passing. We had settled into our 
winter quarters on February 8th, 1902, and had seen no Emperor Penguins there at 
all, until, on March 30th, we were surprised by a party of twenty-eight, whose 
tracks over the ice showed that they had wandered very irregularly along re-frozen 
cracks, endeavouring to find some place where they could enter the water. They 
kept well together always, travelling in single file, now and again halting as 
mentioned above to huddle together in a heap, all facing towards a common centre, 
presumably for warmth and sleep. Occasionally the tracks showed that a bird had 
preferred to travel on its breast, but as a rule they all were walking. 
No bird was then seen till the 8th of April, when again a party of between 
thirty and forty appeared in the darkness near the ship. Of these we caught and 
killed a large number, and one was the heaviest so far recorded, scaling 90]bs. The 
G 2 
