ABOUT THE PENGUIN. 
195 
gloat over the scaly treasures. "Just feel this fine mullet, this fat 
haddock, this plump eel ! Did you ever see finer, more appetizing, or 
fresher-coloured flesh?" And each fish aff'ords a theme for interminable 
discussion. However, to all worldly happiness there must be a limit ; 
yes, even to the intemperance of the bill and the lust of the eye ! After 
having given full course to his hilarious voracity, each of our gastroso- 
phists prepares to stow away his capture in his portable " meat-safe," 
reserving for his supper a particularly choice specimen. This dish for 
a king he then seizes in his powerful bill, turns and turns it in all 
directions, swallows it at a single gulp, digests it, and falls asleep. An 
observer describes as a curious spectacle the long file of great white 
birds, motionless and slumbering, with the red bill down-pressed on 
the fish-distended pouch. At a distance, it looks like a row of white- 
coated Austrian grenadiers, posted on an artificial embankment to 
defend the passage of the river against a hostile force. 
THE PENGUIN. 
In all these proceedings, the pelican, it must be confessed, manifests 
a degree of intelligence, a faculty of comparison and observation, and a 
capacity for association, which i-ise far above the standard of that 
automatic, semi-mechanical " instinct," of old regarded as the attribute 
of the Bird. But we must now turn from the pelican to the penguin, 
and from the laughing islands of Polynesia to the bleak shores of the 
far South. 
To the west of Tristan d'Acunha, in the South Pacific Ocean, lies 
Inaccessible Island ; surrounded, as its name implies, by a bold rampart 
of black cliff", which at first sight appears to the approaching voyager 
an impenetrable barrier. At the foot of the cliff", but separated from it 
by a bank of earth, covered with tussock grass, runs a strip of stony 
beach, incessantly resounding with the roll of the dark-green waves. 
This lonesome spot is one of the favourite retreats of the penguins, 
which here collect in all the order and regularity of a civilized com- 
munity. Penguins, in the popular belief, are stupid birds ; but this 
belief we suspect to have no other foundation than their oddity of 
appearance. If the characteristic of a bird be the faculty of flight, they 
