Ml-RPHY : I'ENGriNS OF SOUTH GEORGIA. I07 
In this jiajjer I shall refer to the king; jienouin communities of our 
acquaintance as the Possession Ba\- colony, the Grace Glacier colony, and 
the Lucas Glacier colony, respectively. I failed to find a trace of the 
colony in Antarctic Bay which is recorded by Lonnberg, and which is 
known to have existed as late as the year 1905. 
With the exception of a single king penguin that came out on the 
beach of King Edward Cove, Cumberland Bay, on Xovember 26, 1912, 
no example of the sjiecies was seen far from the rookeries. 
On December 16 many of the kings at the Grace Glacier colony, 
(No. I, of fig. I ), which lay on a slight rise behind the beach, were 
incubating eggs, while at the .same time half a dozen young of the 
previous year, full.\- grown but with ragged patches of long down still 
attached to their contour feathers, were associating with free adult 
birds, ^i" The sitters stretched up to as great a height as possible at the 
approach of their first human visitors (at least during that season), and 
clung tenaciously to their eggs. After the members of our crew had 
gathered many eggs and had put them in one spot on the ground, the 
robbed penguins approached the pile and .slyh" appropriated eggs to replace 
the lost ones. But not only did they attempt to take one egg — the proper 
complement — several tried to tuck two between their thighs. One bird 
pathetically attempted to gather up an egg which had been crushed flat 
when a sailor, tipjnng its owner forward, had .seized it too roughly. 
In common with the emperor jienguin (A. fors/cri ) the king penguin 
develops insatiable ' ' sitting ' ' propensities. Repeatedly I .saw robbed 
kings mothering smooth stones in place of eggs, and those which did not 
have recourse to such cold .solace .shuffled around on the full extent of the 
foot for a while after losing their egg, instead of ri.sing at once to the 
ordinary digitigrade gait. It takes them some hours to become accustomed 
to an empty egg repository. The egg, as Weddell correctly infers, is 
carried in the space between belly, tail, and feet. I was never able, how- 
ever, to discover in either sex anything re.sembling a "cavity" such as 
Weddell mentions. The position of the sitting king pengtiin is .satis- 
factorily described by the accompanying photograph.s — .squatty, with 
inturned toes, depressed tail, and a broad transver.se fold of skin covering 
the front of the egg which is raised above the ground and rests U]ion the 
bird's metatarsi. 
*I was not able, either at this time nr later, to confirm Weddells observation that molting 
king penguins are repelled by the others, althongh both molters and sitters are given to congregating 
principally with their own kind. 
