THE INTELLECTUAL OBSEKYER. 



JULY, 1865. 



THE KING PENGUIN (Apterodytes Pennantii). 



BY W. B. TEGETMEIER. 



(With a Colowecl Plate.) 



Few events have occurred more interesting to European orni- 

 thologists, who have never visited the Southern Hemisphere, 

 than the recent arrival of the King Penguin at the Zoological' 

 Gardens, Kegent's Park. 



From time to time various efforts have been made to bring 

 to England specimens of different species of the extraordinary- 

 group, constituting the family Spheniscince, but these have always 

 hitherto proved failures. For the possession of the individual 

 whose portrait is so correctly given in the coloured plate, the 

 Zoological Society were indebted to Commander William 

 Fenwick, of H.M.S. Harrier, who brought the bird from the 

 neighbourhood of the Falkland Islands.* 



The family of the penguins (Spheniscince), which includes 

 several distinct genera, comprises unquestionably the most 

 aquatic of all birds. Flight, the usual means of progres- 

 sion of the class to which they belong, is entirely denied 

 them. On land their progress is slow and comparatively- 

 awkward, but in the water their movements are rapid and 

 easy to an extreme degree. In swimming and diving their 

 speed surpasses even that of the majority of fishes. They sport 

 and seek their food safely during the heaviest gales, and spring 

 from the water in play with such rapidity, that they cannot 

 be distinguished from leaping fish, and as they feed their 

 beloved young on the rocky islands of the southern seas, 

 they recal to mind the exquisite lines of Shelley, as — 



* Notwithstanding the care taken of the penguin at the Zoological Gardens, it 

 unfortunately died. 



VOL. VII. — NO. VI. D D 



