THE ADELIE PENGUIN. 45 
wanting to the runt. Sleepily it stands there with half-shut eyes in a torpor resulting 
from exhaustion, cold, and hunger, wondering perhaps what all the bustle round it 
means, a little dirty dishevelled dot, in the race for life a failure, deserted by its parents 
who have hunted vainly for their own offspring round the nest in which they hatched 
it, but from which it may by now have wandered half a mile. And so it stands, lost to 
everything around, till a Skua in its beat drops down beside it, and with a few 
strong vicious pecks puts an end to the failing life. 
Not once or twice, but a thousand times this happens, and the kindness of 
Nature’s seeming cruelty was borne in upon us as we watched its working. All 
round the rookery are Skuas’ nests with their young; the conditions of life are hard, 
and failures must be many where the standard of efficiency is high. Not fifty per 
cent. of the Skuas themselves survive their infancy; not thirty per cent. of the 
Emperor Penguin chicks survive ; and from the corpse-strewn condition of the acres 
occupied by an Adélie Penguin rookery, where not merely egg shells by the score, but 
mangled chicken remnants by the many hundred, lie to be trodden into frozen dust, 
and muddy guano, one may guess, I think, with truth, that even in these communities 
the death-rate is excessive. No one can walk over a mile or two of such a breeding 
ground without being astounded by the number of the dead around him. He will 
notice, moreover, at once that it is not only the youngest of the chickens that die, but 
that a very large proportion are birds which have already shed their down and have 
assumed the plumage which enables them to take the water. Why, one wonders, did 
these birds die on shore? The parents left them, true, but they were ready to be left, 
and yet apparently they never dared the water, where alone they could escape starvation. 
Once again the uncompromising character of Nature’s teaching was brought home to 
us as we realized that death was the one alternative to a creature that refused to learn. 
Our nearest large rookery of Adélie Penguins was that which was already known 
at Cape Crozier, a distance of fifty miles by sledge from our winter quarters in 
McMurdo Sound. This rookery we visited many times, landing there first from the 
ship on January 22nd, 1902. From the ship also we landed to investigate the rookery 
at Cape Adare on January 9th, 1902. From the ship again we sighted rookeries on 
the northern slopes of Coulman Island, on the southern slopes of Cape Jones, on the 
southern shores of Wood Bay, and on Cape Bird. There was also a small rookery 
within 20 miles of our winter quarters on the headland now called Cape Royds, and it 
was here that we encamped for a part of the breeding season in January, 1904. Quite a 
considerable number of sledge journeys were made to the rookery at Cape Crozier, 
and at the time of the birds’ return in the early spring we were encamped there 
also fora month. Lieutenants Royds and Skelton visited the rookery more than once 
to deposit records for the ‘ Morning,’ and the observations brought back by them are 
incorporated in the present account. 
Now, although it will be seen that we were not quite so happily situated for orni- 
thological work as we might have wished, and, although in the case of the Adeélie 
