THE PENGUINS OF THE ANTARCTIC REGIONS.1

By L. GAIN,

Doctor of Science, Naturalist of the Charcot Expedition.

[With 9 plates.]

Owing to the numerous scientific observations made since the close of the last century by various expeditions in the south polar regions certain vertebrate animals inhabiting those frozen lands are to-day well known.

Of the 36 species of birds met below 60° south latitude, there are 5 belonging to a single family, that of the Spheniscidae, which particularly attract the attention of voyagers. We allude to the penguins.2

Penguins are the true inhabitants of these polar regions; from whatever direction one approaches the south, he is always sure to meet them. It is they that by their numerous rookeries, by their continual movement, and by their cries animate this land to which they bring life; it is they that relieve navigation in the polar regions from the monotony that it would finally have, if they were not there to strike between whiles a gay, lively note in the polar landscape. These penguins differ widely from other birds. Their wings, without quills, provided only with little feathers that one might compare to scales, form mere paddles unfit for flight; plantigrades, they walk heavily, slowly, and when they wish to quicken their pace they fall flat on the ground, making their way through the snow by the aid of their feet and of their little wings, which also serve to balance them. Spending almost all their life in the sea, where they seek the crustaceans and small fish upon which they feed, they are wonderful swimmers, of an extraordinary suppleness and activity.

1 Translated by permission (with additions by the author) from La Nature, Paris, No. 2041, July 6, 1912. This name was first given to them by the Spanish navigators of the seventeenth century; they called them pinguinos, from pengüigo, meaning grease, a name given them because of the abundance of fat with which these birds are covered.

One can not give a more exact idea of the penguin than by reprinting these few lines of M. Racovitza, the eminent naturalist of the Belgica expedition:

Imagine a little old man, standing erect, provided with two broad paddles instead of arms, with a head small in comparison with the plump, stout body; imagine this creature with his back covered with a dark coat spotted with blue, tapering behind to a pointed tail that drags on the ground, and adorned in front with a glossy white breastplate. Have this creature walk on his two feet, and give him at the same time a droll little waddle and a continual movement of the head; you have before you something irresistibly attractive and comical.

Penguins have inhabited the Antarctic continent from very remote geological periods. We will only remind our readers of the discoveries of the Swedish expedition of Dr. Otto Nordenskjöld, who found on Seymour Island fossil bones belonging to five species, each of which formed the type of a new genus, and which lived, according to Dr. Wiman, who made a study of them, at the beginning of the Tertiary period, in the Eocene epoch.

At the present time, confining ourselves entirely to the birds found below 60° south latitude, five species inhabit these southern lands; among these five, two-the Emperor and the Adelie-are distributed over the whole circumference of the Antarctic continent; the other three are confined to the neighborhood of the South American Antarctic regions.

There is first of all the Macaroni penguin (Catarrhactes chrysolophus), of which some rookeries of a few hundred individuals are found on the South Shetland Islands, particularly on Deception Island. It has a height of 60 centimeters; the back and head are bluish-black with a velvety luster; above the eyes, bands of elongated eyebrows, golden-yellow, meet on the forehead; the iris is garnet, the beak reddish-brown with the commissure of the mandibles pale purple. It is a quiet, peaceful, trusting creature, letting itself be easily approached when on its nest, and even caressed, rarely trying to give a blow with beak or wing. The rookeries of these Macaroni penguins are often intermingled with those of the Antarctic penguin, with which they live on good terms. In their nest, which consists of a mere depression in the ground, they lay toward the end of November an egg of a slightly bluish-white, on which the parents sit alternately.

Of the five species of Antarctic penguins, Catarrhactes chrysolophus is the one that ventures the shortest distance southward, not going below 63° south latitude. Solitary individuals have been seen in the South Orkney Islands; farther north one finds them in South Georgia and even in the Falklands, and in the east on Prince Edward, Marion, Kerguelen, and Heard Islands.

The Antarctic penguin (Pygocelis antarctica), slightly smaller than the preceding, is easily distinguished from the other penguins by the