SWIMMING OF PENGUINS 
for the future of the penguin. Furthermore, the barren 
shores which they haunt do not breed fierce carnivorous 
creatures to assault them when on the nest. In the 
water the penguin swims with the greatest elegance 
and with a peculiarly buoyant motion that suggests a 
positive flight ; this, if the water be clear enough, will 
certainly be the delusion of the onlooker. Black to 
brown above and with a white belly is the prevailing 
hue of the penguin tribe, and the species which we select 
here, as well as some of its immediate allies, havea 
streak of yellow feathers upon the head, which relieves 
this dull coloration. Swimming in the water with the 
paddles extended, the black back, with occasional 
views of the white underparts, quite suggests, when 
the animal is seen from above, one of the dolphin tribe, 
to which the long beak and the abbreviated tail adds not 
a little in the way of resemblance. Further, the yellow 
about the head is repeated in some dolphins, while the 
flippers of the bird are by no means widely different 
to outward view from the swimming fore limbs of 
the dolphin. It has been pointed out, too, that this 
penguin will at times spring clean out of the water, and 
when a flock, if we can apply the term flock to anything 
that does not live in air or on land, rise out of the waves 
in rapid succession the appearance of a shoal of por- 
poises is distinctly simulated. So aptly constructed 
are the penguins for a life on the ocean wave that one 
hears with surprise a story to the effect that the shores 
of certain parts of New Zealand are sometimes littered 
with the corpses of the small penguin, Eudyptula minor, 
which have perished in the surf. Besides its paddles, 
its short neck, its generally whale-like outline, and its 
strong swimming feet, the penguin is eminently fitted 
for a submarine life by its unusual fatness, and by the 
close coating of feathers which decks its body. In 
almost all other birds a careful examination will show 
224 
