THE KING PENGUIN. ae 
The food of the King Penguin 
and cephalopods, many cuttle-fish 
stomach. 
at this rookery consisted mainly of crustaceans, fish 
beaks being found accompanied by pebbles in the 
The King Penguin has methods of progression precisely comparable to those which 
I have more fully described in the Emperor Penguin. It was, therefore, not always 
easy to catch the bird before it dropped down on its breast and ruined its plumage by 
toboganning in the filthy mire ; nor were we ourselves pleasant objects, either to sight 
or smell, when the chase was over, spattered as we were from head to foot with a 
most offensive mud. 
There are,as I have said above, certain points in the colouration of the King 
Penguin which are deserving of very careful consideration. Of the colouring of the 
chicks I will say nothing, since we saw them only in the latest stages; and of the 
significant differences between these and the Emperors’ chicks I have already spoken in 
dealing with the latter. But in all the older stages I would call attention to a gradual 
change in the pigmentation of the feathers of the crown of the head, which can be 
traced from the first year’s immature plumage, through the ordinary adult, right on to 
the extraordinary plumage of such an aged example as that figured on Plate VIIL, 
fig. 4. This bird was taken on the Snares off the coast of New Zealand. Unhappily 
the sex is not known, but it is probably an old and exceptionally vigorous male. 
To begin with, in the first immature plumage, which replaces the down at the end 
of the first year, the crown is distinct from the rest of the black head as a diamond- 
shaped patch of pearly bluish-grey. This is seen to be effected, if one examines the 
crown feathers closely, by the terminal third of each feather being pale bluish-grey 
tipped with a tinge of yellow, while the central third is black, and the basal third 
is white. If the same crown feathers are examined from the head of a bird in 
ordinary adult plumage, the arrangement of the pigment in each feather is found 
to have completely altered. Instead of three bands there are only two, the termindl 
half being dark brown or black, with a minute amount of orange pigment intermixed, 
and the basal half white. Associated with this change in the individual feathers 
is an obvious change in the crown patch, which instead of being grey is now seen 
to be black with a greenish gloss, which results from the intermingling of 
minute dots of vivid orange pigment with the black. The same green gloss is to 
be seen upon the chin and throat, but at present I concern myself with the crown 
patch only. 
If then we turn to the Snares example, the significance of these minute 
changes in the distribution of the pigment begins to explain itself. The green 
gloss on the crown has become definitely circumscribed by rows of feathers with 
distinctly orange tips, and these I take to be associated with the development of the 
superciliary golden crests and bands to be found in Catarrhactes and Megadyptes. If 
the individual feathers of these primitive superciliary bands are examined more closely, 
the arrangement of the pigment will once more be found to have completely altered, 
