THE KING PENGUIN. 33 
For a concise account of the range and distribution of the King Penguin I must refer 
the reader to Mr. Howard Saunders’ account in the “Antarctic Manual.” Briefly, it 
has been recorded from South Georgia, Tierra del Fuego, and the south-eastern portions 
of the Straits of Magellan, the Falkland Islands, Marion, Kerguelen, and Heard Islands, 
and the Crozets. Farther East it has been recorded from the Stewart and Snares 
Tslands, New Zealand, and as far south as the Macquarie Islands. It has never been 
recorded within the Antarctic Circle. 
Without attempting to give a complete description of the bird’s life history, it 
will not be out of place if I give a short account of our visit to the Macquarie 
Island, where, on November 22nd, 1901, we investigated a large rookery of King 
Penguins at perhaps the busiest time of the year. Macquarie Island lies about 600 
miles 8.W. of New Zealand, and we made our landing on the east side, anchoring in 
Fisherman’s Cove. The shore is belted by a thick fringe of kelp, and the eastern 
slopes of the island are covered with a coarse tussock grass, which grows breast: high. 
Between the foot of the hills at this point and the seashore is an extensive beach and 
a stretch of stony quagmire, with patches of tussock here and there, and it was in this 
quagmire that the King Penguin rookery was situated (fig. 26, p. 34). 
Megalestris anturctica was abundant here; we also saw in varying numbers 
Larus dominicanus, Ossifraga gigantea, and a Cormorant, one of which was taken and 
proved to be Phalacrocorax traversi; Sterna frontalis; Prion of more than one species, 
probably desolatus and vittutus, and certainly banksi ; Diomedea exulans, a young one ; 
D. melanophrys, Thalassogeron culminatus, and a species of Phebetria. On shore we 
found a species of Ocydromus in abundance, which has since been named O. scotti 
by Mr. Ogilvie Grant, from a specimen sent home soon after our own visit to the 
Island, by Lord Ranfurly ; and lastly, a large nesting colony of Catarrhactes schlegeli, 
which was quite close to but distinct from that of the King Penguins. 
In one of the whalers’ huts on shore we found, amongst other things, a collection of 
prepared bird skins, amongst which I noticed the albino example of Catarrhactes schlegeli, 
which is now in the British Museum collection. This and some other skins I had intended 
saving from the mice, which had already played havoc with the feet and bills of the 
majority ; but in the necessarily hurried business of transferring a collection of about 
forty fresh-killed birds and eggs to the boats, they were forgotten. We were surprised 
on our return to England nearly three years after to recognize the skin in the National 
collection. 
There was in the King Penguins’ rookery a large number of birds busily 
incubating eggs. These, as is now well known, they hold upon their feet, tucked in 
between the légs and covered from sight by a loose fold of skin and feathers, and so 
tightly were they held that although we lifted the birds bodily from the ground, yet the 
egg was very seldom dropped. The object of thus holding the egg is to keep it from 
the wet and muddy quagmire in which the birds prefer to incubate ; a parallel case to 
the Emperor Penguin, where the object is to keep the egg from contact with the ice. 
