Order SPHENISCIFOKMES.] 



[Family SPHENISCIDiE. 



PYGOSCELIS PAPUA. 



(ROCK-HOPPEE.) 



Pygoscelis taeniatus, Peale; Buller, Birds of New Zealand, vol. ii., p, 304. 



My first authority for including this Penguin among the birds of this country was a pair in the 

 Otago Museum, obtained from Macquarie Islands, where this bird is said to be comparatively 

 plentiful. I afterwards received a pair of skins ( 2 and 2 ) from the same locality. 



Dr. Kidder found it very abundant on Kerguelen Island. He writes : " Two or three of the 

 birds were captured by the boat's crew, which went on shore after the eggs, and brought back to 

 the ship, where they created a good deal of amusement. When walking away from the spectator, 

 swaying from side to side, with flippers hanging well away from the body, they have a ridiculous 

 resemblance to small children just beginning to walk, who have put on overcoats much too long 

 for them. . . . No living thing that I ever saw expresses so graphically a state of hurry as a 

 Penguin when trying to escape. Its neck is stretched out, flippers whirring like the sails of a 

 windmill, and body wagging from side to side, as its short legs make stumbling and frantic efforts 

 to get over the ground. There is such an expression of anxiety written all over the bird ; it picks 

 itself up from every fall, and stumbles again, with such an air of having an armful of bundles, that 

 it escapes capture quite as often by the laughter of the pursuer as by its own really considerable 

 speed. On the 3rd of December, about the time of hatching, I observed a school of these 

 Penguins progressing by leaps clear of the water ; one following another in so rapid succession 

 that two or three were always in the air, and with a motion so like that of porpoises that I at first 

 took them for those marine mammals. In the water, indeed, all awkwardness at once disappears, 

 their speed in swimming being almost incredible, and surpassing, of course, that of the fish upon 

 which they feed. On the 4th of December I found one young Penguin just hatched, and three 

 more still in the eggs, which they had broken with their beaks. The young are covered with soft, 

 hairy, pearl-grey down; head black, above and behind." 



CATAIUIHACTES CHRYSOCOME. 



(TUFTED PENGUIN.) 



Eudyptes chrysocome, Porster;. Buller, Birds of New Zealand, vol. ii., p. 290. 



I am able now to add to my account of this species a description of the nestling from a specimen 

 obtained at Dusky Sound : — Head, throat, hind-neck, and upper parts — that is to say, the surface 

 that is coloured in the adult — covered with short sooty-black down, and the under-parts with short 

 white down ; bill whitish-horn colour ; feet pale-brown. 





