THE EMPEROR PENGUIN. 23 
The most puzzling fact about the Emperor Penguin is that the colouring of its 
nestling is totally different from that of the nestling of the King. Previous to its 
discovery in 1902 it would have been deemed reasonable to surmise that the chicken 
of the Emperor when found would be uniformly dark brown in colour and hardly dis- 
tinguishable from the chicken of the King. But this is far from being the case. 
In direct contrast, it has a jet-black head with a pure white area surrounding each 
of the eyes. The black of the head starting from the base of the upper bill, and 
including the forehead, lores and chin, is continued over the crown to the nape 
of the neck. There it blends with the silver grey of the back, to be continued as 
a grey or blackish band, almost, but in most cases not quite, meeting on the fore 
neck as a collar. Between this collar and the chin, which is jet black, the throat 
is pure white, as is also a rounded area including the cheek, eyebrow, and ear coverts. 
The minute little tuft of stiff feathers which constitutes the tail is jet black, and the 
whole of the remainder of the down covering the body is silvery white or grey, with 
this notable peculiarity, that the darker area is on the under surface, extending from 
the fore neck to the vent, over breast and abdomen, whereas the whiter area is on the 
dorsal aspect including the nape, mantle, scapulars, back and rump, as well as the 
minute and downy-coated flippers, thus reversing the usual order, in which the 
under parts are lighter, or at least not darker than the upper (figs. 16, 17, p. 24). 
The complete absence of any protrusion of the brow or superciliary prominence 
gives the bird a quizzical look which is always entertaining. The movements of the 
eye are quick, and the upper lid is raised to look upwards without much motion of 
the head. The outer coverings of the eye are almost flush with the outer contour 
of the face and head; there is no attempt to offer it protection by bony ridges, but 
every effort is made to produce an eye so placed as to catch the glint of a fish above, 
below, ahead or astern, while the bird is in its element under water in search of food. 
I have so far been unsuccessful in finding any discernible reason for the peculiarities 
of colour distribution to which attention has just been drawn. That at one period the 
adults of the Emperor and the King must have been totally distinct one has every right 
to conclude from the fact that the chick of the one is uniformly dark and brown, while 
the chick of the other is a fantastic piebald of black and white. Yet the adults have 
such striking similarities in their jet-black heads, their orange necks and beak plates, 
their bluish backs and lemon-yellow breasts, that one is led to consider them close 
relations to one another until their chickens are examined side by side. Even then 
one is reminded that the Emperor Penguin and the King Penguin lay but one egg 
each, and that both incubate the egg in the same way on the dorsum of the foot instead 
of in a nest. This they do moreover in an upright position instead of squatting on 
the egg as do other penguins. It is impossible to think that these many peculiar 
similarities have been developed independently by birds which were once more distinct, 
but how then can one explain the total dissimilarity that exists now in the chicks? The 
simplest way out of the difficulty would be to say that the white down of the Emperor’s 
