FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 315 
with a smooth white sheet so that it does not look as if 
it had only been formed last night. 
It is amusing to watch the row of penguins standing on 
the slope. The wind is driving the falling snow past 
them, now and then blotting them out of sight. They do 
not seem to mind the least, but preen their thin, wiry 
feathers, apparently in perfect comfort. Possibly this 
snowy wind is to them pleasantly refreshing, after the 
hot summer days they have had lately, when the ther- 
mometer went up to 30 0 Fahrenheit, in the shade. 
A number of nellies or giant petrels come circling over 
us as we slowly drift from our shelter to leeward. They 
gorge themselves with the cran 1 that is constantly being 
thrown over our sides, then fly back to the snow and sit 
down beside their penguin friends. Strange, ugly birds 
they are, the apparent coarseness of their build and their 
grey-green clumsy beaks and rough brown feathers give 
the impression that nature has turned them out in a 
very wholesale fashion. Some of them are partly white, 
and a few, of the same kind of bird I believe, perhaps 
one in twenty, are pure white all but one or two 
brown feathers. The different stages of colouring are 
rather like those of the gannet, we call them Scaven- 
gers. They appear to be on a friendly footing with 
1 Scraps of seals' flesh cut off the blubber. This name is also given to the 
carcass of the seal when its skin and blubber has been stripped off. 
