BIRDS OF THE AUSTRALASIAN SOUTH POLAR QUADRANT. 
in more than one case directed us to search for and discover a' hitherto 
unsuspected colony. The smell is unpleasantly fishy and ammoniacal and 
quite unlike the smell of anything else. On one occasion this smell was forced 
upon 'our notice when w r e were no less than thirty miles from the nearest 
Penguin rookery. 
The quantity of crustaceans brought in during the day to such a 
rookery as that which exists at Cape Crozier or Cape Adare must he immense, 
for parents hurry in ashore from one end of the twenty-four hours to the 
other without cessation, their stomachs loaded with a mess of shrimps. 
Chickens by the hundred stand in little groups of twelve to twenty, now 
in a state of bulging repletion, now in a ravenous hurry, chasing some 
unfortunate adult but lately arrived with spoil from the open sea. 
One may, therefore, infer from the uniform colour of the thin layer of 
guano in every Adelie Penguin rookery that these red crustaceans do form 
their staple diet; but at Cape Royds I have known them eat small fish, 
some three or four inches long, and no doubt they also feed on cephalopods, 
the beaks of which are often found in their stomachs. Beyond the remains 
of fish, cephalopods, Eupliausice, and other crustaceans, an invariable con¬ 
comittant in the stomach of this bird is a collection of small pebbles, swal¬ 
lowed, no doubt, for the purpose of reducing to a pulpy mass the indigestable 
parts of the crustaceans. That these pebbles are very necessary may be 
gathered from their constant presence in the stomach. There is no separate 
crop or gizzard, as such, in Penguins, where the stomach forms one large 
undivided muscular sac capable of great distension. 
The chicken is entirely dependent upon its parents for food from the 
time it leaves the egg until it has completely shed its dowm and has assumed 
a feathering which enables it to enter the w r ater. Undoubtedly it requires 
a verjr large supply of food, for its growth is rapid and the state of repletion 
which eventually brings the chicken to consider that it has had enough is 
not readily arrived at. One winders hov r the young that are hatched out 
on the summit of such mountainous heights, nearly a thousand feet above 
the sea, can ever obtain a sufficiency of food. Yet they are as well grown 
and as healthy there as they are at the sea level, thanks to the untiring 
efforts of their parents, who form a constant stream passing up and down 
the sides of the mountain in beaten tracks. One cannot but marvel at the 
persistence with W'hich these little birds, using their feet, bills and flippers, 
laboriously climb to the summit of such rugged slopes. Why, one wonders, 
should they ever set themselves such an infinite amount of unnecessary labour 
when there is ample room for them to nest and rear their young on the 
flat moraines below ? 
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