June 17, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
939 
Birds and Mammals of Desolation 
Island. 
In 1874, long before the old Trinity was cast 
away on Heard’s Island, the United States ship 
Swatara carried to Kerguelen Island various 
parties that had been organized for observing 
the transit of Venus in the Southern Hemis¬ 
phere. With a party of observers which landed 
in the southern part of Kerguelen Island was 
Doctor J. H. Kidder, who reported on the life 
of the island. The only land mammal found 
there was the common house mouse, no doubt 
imported by early sealers, but upon Cat Island, 
one of those bounding Three-Island Harbor, 
the domestic cat has for many years existed in 
the wild state. It preys upon sea birds and 
their young. In former years all these islands 
had been favorite breeding places for the sea 
elephants which, however, had at that time be¬ 
come very scarce. Dr. Kidder secured one 
specimen—which was afterward lost—that 
measured twenty-three feet in length. The seal 
leopard and a fur seal have been reported. 
John Easmond’s paddy is called in the books 
the sheath-bill (Chionis minor). It is an odd 
form which Drs. Kidder and Coues believed 
formed a connecting link between the gulls and 
the shore birds or waders. Dr. Kidder found 
this bird abundant, very tame and very in¬ 
quisitive. They were observed to feed on the 
soft green seaweed, but one kept for some time 
on shipboard broke with its beak the shells of 
eggs as if accustomed to do this. ‘'When taken 
home alive they showed no fear, but when let 
loose in the house took food readily, and oddly 
enough fought fiercely among themselves, using 
only their bills, however, and not the wing 
spurs. None of us ever saw them fighting in 
the open air.” 
This species is late in pairing and nesting. 
No egg was found until Jan. 10, which, of 
course, in the Southern Hemisphere is equiva¬ 
lent to our July 10. Captain Fuller reported to 
Dr. Kidder that the sheath-bill is famous for 
its skill in concealing its nest, that they build 
in crevices of the rocks and the nests are con¬ 
structed of dried grass. The eggs are the size 
of a small hen’s egg, slate-colored, blotched 
with dark brown. 
The “sea hen” of the whalers is a skua. 
They are large and daring birds, acting for 
all the world like a hawk, even trying to steal 
the game killed by the gunner whom they 
habitually follow. They attack and kill the great 
petrels known as “stinkers,” and these birds 
seem much afraid of them, but if unhurt can 
escape by flying. Dr. Kidder speaks of the sea 
hens as avoiding the water and preying solely, 
so far as he could observe, on other birds. On 
the other hand, he saw one flying about the 
ship Monongahela when she was about 300 
miles from the nearest land. On a few oc¬ 
casions he saw one alight in the water, and 
when it did so it -held its wings up perpendicu¬ 
larly like a butterfly. 
Of the “Johnny” (Pygoscelis taniata), whose 
lines John Easmond declared to be “a cruel 
sight to see in any Christian country,” Dr. 
Kidder found many. He says: 
“Two or three of the birds were captured by 
the boat’s crew which went on shore after the 
eggs, and brought back to the ship, where they 
created a good deal of amusement. When walk¬ 
ing away from the spectator, swaying from side 
to side, with flippers hanging well away from 
the body, they bear a ridiculous resemblance to 
small children just beginning to walk, who 
have put on overcoats much too long for them. 
A rookery was found about two miles from our 
station, which I visited Sept. 16, finding many 
e Sgs. It is established from the seaward extremity 
of a high rocky ridge running nearly parallel 
with the trend of the shore and abutting upon 
the sea in lofty bluffs.” The penguins land at 
a little rocky cove and are obliged to climb up 
the steep slopes of a hill. They have worn 
paths in the meadowland near the sea in some 
cases almost four feet in depth. The eggs re¬ 
semble in size and shape those of the duck and 
the birds have been so constantly robbed 01 
their eggs that Dr. Kidder estimated that 
those which he collected must have been of 
the ninth or tenth laying since the season 
began. 
“No living thing that I ever saw expresses 
so graphically a state of hurry as a penguin 
when trying to escape. Its neck is stretched 
out, flippers whirling like the sails of a wind¬ 
mill, and body wagging from side to side as its 
short legs make stumbling and frantic efforts 
to get over the ground. There is such an ex¬ 
pression of anxiety written all over the bird; it 
picks itself up from every fall and stumbles 
again with such an air of having an armful of 
bundles, that it escapes capture quite as often 
by the laughter of the pursuer as by its own 
really considerable speed. 
"On the 3d of December near the landing 
cove already mentioned, about the time of 
hatching, I observed a school of these penguins 
progressing by leaps clear of the water; one 
following another in so rapid succession that 
two or three were always in the air, and with a 
motion so like that of a school of porpoises, that 
I at first took them for those marine mammals. 
In the water, indeed, all awkwardness at once 
disappears; their speed in swimming being al¬ 
most incredible and surpassing, of course, that 
of the fish upon which they feed.” 
Dr. Kidder declares of the rock-hopper that 
the whalers’ epithet is particularly well applied, 
since they are “the most agile of all penguins, 
skipping from rock to rock, climbing very steep 
inclined surfaces and getting over the ground 
with great speed. It is worthy of notice that 
these penguins always hop, using both feet at 
a time, like a sparrow and never walk as do 
other genera.” 
The sea elephant had been exterminated 
there, except for one stretch of beach, limited at 
each end by precipitous cliffs, across which it 
is impossible to transport oil in casks, and in¬ 
accessible from the sea for boats or vessels, be¬ 
cause the beach is on the west coast and so ex¬ 
posed to the full violence of the wind. On this 
beach the animals still haul up every spring 
and breed in numbers. 
Five years previous to 1874 these elephants 
had been so scarce on the Crozets Islands that 
it had not seemed worth the while of any 
sealers to work them for the oil. From this it 
happened that the animals being unmolested 
were found there very numerous in 1874, which 
shows how rapidly these creatures of the sea 
will increase, provided they are not extermi¬ 
nated on their breeding grounds. At the time 
of Dr. Kidder’s visit to Kerguelen Island two 
schooners and a bark were collecting oil at 
Heard’s Island to the south. 
Field Museum of Natural History. 
The annual report of the director of the Field 
Museum of Natural History to the board of 
trustees tells an interesting story of progress. 
Dr. Frederick J. V. Skiff, who makes the re¬ 
port, is assisted by an able force of men whose 
activities cover the department of anthropology, 
botany, geology and zoology. Both museum 
work and research work receive much attention; 
popular instruction is given by the free lecture 
courses of spring and autumn, and publications 
are frequently issued. 
During the year there have been many ac¬ 
cessions to the museum’s collections, and in all 
departments. Various expeditions were sent 
out by the museum to collect material, and these 
expeditions brought together interesting col¬ 
lections from various parts of the world. Of 
especial interest are certain fossil mammals 
coming from a portion of the so-called Uinta 
desert, lying in the basin of White River in 
Utah. 
The work of preparing beautiful and instruc¬ 
tive groups of birds and mammals goes on con¬ 
stantly and W. H. Osgood is at work on the 
preparation of a group of beaver. Efforts are 
being made to complete and to exhibit the local 
life of the regions of the Great Lakes. 
Dr. Skiff’s report is beautifully illustrated by 
photographs of various specimens and mode's 
on exhibition in the museum. Of peculiar in¬ 
terest is a group of mounted skins of the gorilla 
from the Congo region, and another group 
showing the skeletons of these same gorillas. 
Many interesting groups of native birds on 
exhibition in the museum are here reproduced, 
and to the courtesy of the museum we owed the 
group of wild turkeys which appeared on the 
cover of Forest and Stream last week, credit 
for which, by regrettable inadvertence, was not 
then properly given. 
International Fur Seal Conference. 
The international conference, which for a 
month or more has been in session in Washing¬ 
ton, considering the protection of mammalian 
life in the North Pacific Ocean, and specifically 
the preservation of the seal herds, has not made 
very satisfactory progress. The four countries 
chiefly interested are the United States, Great 
Britain, Japan and Russia. Each of these nations 
has a pretty positive idea of its own interests 
and rights, and those on the western side of the 
Pacific, Japan and Russia, seem disposed to be 
wholly unyielding. 
All these countries are willing to prohibit 
pelagic sea'ing—wh : ch all acknowledge must be 
done if the seals are to continue to exist—but 
