Ml-RPHV : PEXOriXS OF SOCTH GEOKC.IA. 127 
they had cleared tlie ed^^e. I saw one individual try a do/.en times and 
fail ; it always leaped a few lengths too soon and whacked its shiiix 
breast against the wall of ice. A group of birds, which had been sunning 
on a snow bank, entered the water as if by mutual agreement. Some of 
them walked to the rocky slope and waded, arching their necks and 
tucking their heads under water before thej- made the plunge. Others 
flopped off the edge of the ice. I .say flopped because they did not make 
graceful standing dives, such as I had expected ; on the contrar\- the>' 
entered with flagrant, spla.shing "belly-bumpers." All of the birds 
when first going into the water executed a curious maneuver, the object 
of which I do not understand. Immediately after the plunge they came 
to the surface and lay .stiffly, first on one .side of their bodies, then on the 
other, and beat with the uppermo.st wing and foot, kicking the latter 
back and forth, and rubbing the wing across the feathers of the side, as 
if trying to wet themselves thoroughly.* 
The great discre]ianc\- between /yi;osir/is papita and /'. adcliir in 
jumping and diving ability is at first sight rather surjirising. Through 
the medium of the films taken during the Au.stralasian Antarctic Ex- 
pedition I have seen the prodigious, .salmonlike leaps of the jiluckx- little 
Adelies, while the photographs of Levick well illustrate the graceful 
dives of these denizens of uttermost southern shores. It must be borne 
in mind, however, that P. papua, with a Subantarctic range, breeds on 
no land which has an ice-shelved coast. The ability to gain the land 1)\- 
a catapultic spring has doubtless vanished with the disappearance of the 
necessity for such a method. Occasionally I saw johnny penguins on the 
very brinks of .South Georgia glaciers where they abutted on the bays, 
but in all such instances the birds had climbed up over a ,slo])ing edge, 
and they invarial)ly returned by the same route. 
The johnn\- i)enguins often feed far at sea, at least sixt\' or s;\-ent.\' 
kilometers from the coast of South Oeorgia, but during the long l)reed- 
ing season they ai>parently all return to the land for the night. In the 
late afternoon we usualh- saw long troojis of them jiorpoising into the 
fiords from .sea. This habit is so well known that sealers, overtaken in 
their boats b\- an imjienetrable South Georgian fog, rely U])on the home- 
coming penguins for the direction of the flat beaches. 
Con.sidering the fact that most natatorial birds swim as .soon as they 
* Writing of J^goscelis adeliir. Clarke, p. 229. reports : •• .\fter they dive they roU over anrl over 
in the water, and wash themselves thoroughly with the aid of their feet, gradually getting rid of the 
red dirt with which they are bespattered and smeared." 
