86 THE INFANCY OF ANIMALS 



there, with half-shut eyes, in a torpor resulting from ex- 

 haustion, cold and hunger ... a 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 now 

 have wandered half a mile. And so it stands, lost to 

 everything around, till a skua on its beat drops down 

 beside it, and with a few strong, vicious pecks, puts an 

 end to its failing life. . . . 



" And it is not only the youngest chickens that die, but 

 ... a very large proportion are birds which have already 

 shed their down, and have assumed the plumage which 

 enables them to take to 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 laws was brought home to us, as we realised 

 that death was the one alternative to a creature that 

 refused to learn." 



In these same desolate antarctic wilds there lives another 

 penguin with a yet more pathetic story. This is the great 

 emperor penguin, which never, during the whole course of 

 its life, touches dry land ; the vast icefields form its only 

 resort when it is not braving the perils of the open water 

 in search of food. Under conditions of such extreme 

 severity it is marvellous, not that it contrives to maintain 

 existence, but that it ever contrived to exist at all. One 

 would have supposed the Umit of endurance would have 

 fallen far short of this. That the struggle for life is severe 

 is shown by the frightful mortality which overtakes the 

 young. 



As an index of the excessive severity of the conditions of 



