BIRDS OF THE AUSTRALASIAN SOUTH POLAR QUADRANT. 
dignity, but if alarmed in any way immediately drop down on to the breast 
and toboggan rapidly along by alternating strokes of their powerful legs and 
wings. H overtaken in their efforts to escape, the birds will at once rise to their 
feet and show fight, facing their antagonists and using bill and flippers simul¬ 
taneously, and the stroke of an Emperor Penguin wing, if caught fairly 
on the hand or on the skin, leaves a bruise which will be felt for many 
weeks. 
When pressed to travel as fast as possible they glide along on the ice at the 
rate of about eight or ten miles an hour. This rate is, of course, much exceeded 
in the water, where their speed and dodging power probably rivals that of 
fishes, seals and whales. They swim with their wings, and may often be seen 
to leap from the water and land upright on a shelf of ice at least four feet above 
the surface. Their only enemies, so far as is known, are also inhabitants of the 
water ; and their ideas of fear are connected chiefly with that element, as in 
the case of the Adelie Penguins. 
There is no doubt that the Sea Leopard is one of the Emperor’s active 
foes. Neither Catharceta maccormieki nor Ossifraga gigantea should be con¬ 
sidered the natural enemy of the Emperor Penguin, for I do not believe that 
the Petrel attacks living things as a rule ; nor has the Skua any opportunity 
to attack the Emperor Penguin’s chickens, since at the time of their infancy, 
in the winter and early spring, they are many hundreds of miles to the south 
of the region then infested by the Skuas. 
The Emperor Penguin sleeps either standing in the upright position, 
with its head turned back over the shoulder so that the tip of the beak 
rests under the back of the wing, or else in the prone position with head 
drawn in upon the neck. The positions assumed by the chick seem to be 
slightly different. Whether the former posture is a relic of days gone by, when 
the bird had a fully-feathered wing and was capable of flight, it is not easy to say ; 
but it is suggestive to see it take up an attitude which would have been 
comfortable when it had thick warm feathers into which to breathe. It may be 
that the position is merely a convenient one for balance, and it is quite certain 
that all comfort must have disappeared since the wing became converted into 
a bony flapper. The prone position is certainly more reasonable with a view 
to economising body heat. Both attitudes are assumed by the chick in its 
earliest stages when taken from the adult. 
We found the temperature of the Emperor Penguin to be 100'7° F. The 
rate of the pulse in a “ pithed” bird was sixty to the minute, and the respiration 
in a chicken twenty. 
There were no parasites discoverable on the skin or amongst the feathers 
of the Emperor Penguin—a fact which is somewhat remarkable, and one which 
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