EMPEROR PENGUIN. 
it will be found to have dropped down a crack in the ice, where it remains to 
freeze in the sludge while the birds dispute its possession just above, not one 
of them having the sense to help it out of its dangerous position. It is not 
wonderful, therefore, that a very large proportion come to grief, and the 
season of the year in which the unhappy chicken is forced to emerge from its egg¬ 
shell undoubtedly tends to increase the enormous death-rate. 
A glance at the mean temperature for each month of the year in this region 
will show at once that the Emperor Penguin chick, which is hatched at the 
end of August, has to face, in the first few weeks of its life, the lowest tempera¬ 
tures of the whole Antarctic year. The mean of the two Septembers of 1902-3 
was -12° F. and - 18° F., and thermometers within a few miles of the rookeries 
in that month recorded - 63° F. and even - 68° F. upon the Barrier. 
The question that naturally arises from an infant mortality of 77 per cent, 
is whether or no the breed of Emperor Penguins is dying out. From all that 
we saw and from all that has been recorded of the wide distribution and com¬ 
paratively frequent occurence of this bird, I should say most certainly not. 
It is met with all over the Antarctic region. The fact of the death-rate being 
high at the only rookery as yet located, a rookery which was situated almost as 
far south as the bird has ever been known to wander, even in the summer months, 
does not necessarily prove that it would be as high in every other rookery. There 
may be conditions at this spot, local and climatic, which would account for an 
extra high mortality, or it may be that the bird has a great longevity and 
that this to some extent counteracts the effect of a high rate of death in infancy. 
A very pathetic sight was to be seen resulting from the intense desire of the 
unemployed adults to “ mother ” something. Having neither eggs nor living 
chickens they are reduced to mothering the dead, and so it was no uncommon 
thing to see an old bird trying to coax a frozen infant into a comfortable position 
between its legs, or to see the head and neck of a lifeless chicken trailing out 
behind by the old bird’s tail. To such an extent was this practised that very 
few of the chickens found dead upon the ice-floe were in a fit condition for 
making specimens. The down was in most cases worn by friction from off the 
stone-hard frozen body, and the legs and wings were in the majority of cases 
broken. Were it not for the interest attached to these mutilations as proof of 
one phase in a unique life history, few of the specimens found dead would have 
been worth preserving. As it was, however, we brought a number of them home. 
As the size of the chicks increased the difficulty of covering them up with 
the flap grew greater, and when we visited them on the 19th of October we 
saw quite a number in which the head and shoulders alone were out of sight, 
the large, round, hinder quarters covered with greyish down sticking out behind, 
surmounted by a short black tail. 
67 
