THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



proportion of them survived a temperature of 200° Fahr. 

 It became a contest between rotifers and scientist, and 

 generally the rotifers seemed to triumph. The biologist 

 will tell his own story in another chapter. 



I noted in my diary that in the middle of March, 

 when daylight lasted eight hours, we still had the skua 

 gulls with us. The young birds were now nearly all 

 flying, but in some cases there were backward youngsters 

 that had not yet gained the use of their wings and 

 were still under the protection of their parents. The 

 Adelie penguins had practically deserted us, only 

 about thirty remaining in the rookery at this time. 

 These birds had been moulting, but all except six had 

 finished the operation. We observed that when moult- 

 ing the penguin does not enter the sea for food, and 

 seems to live on its own blubber, taking no food but 

 eating large quantities of snow. On March 17, after 

 snow had been falling all night, Murray walked over 

 to the rookery and saw only half the penguins remaining, 

 as he thought, but suddenly the others rose up from 

 under his feet. They had been lying down and had 

 been covered with snow, their bills only protruding. 

 There were large numbers of Weddel seals about at this 

 time, and from the top of the cliff we saw one lying 

 asleep in the water, with has nostrils just showing 

 above the surface. There was still open water close 

 to our winter quarters, but young ice was beginning 

 to form in the bay again, and beautiful ice flowers 

 appeared on the surface of this young ice. About 

 this time on the slopes of Erebus, a mile and a half 

 from the hut, a most interesting And of marine 

 serpula? was made on a moraine about 320 ft. above 

 sea-level and near this deposit was some yellow earth 

 containing diatoms. We could not at the time deter- 

 mine the cause of this peculiar deposit, but it was 



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