Penguin

a name once applied to the great auk, but transferred to a somewhat similar bird found in the southern hemisphere, particularly in Patagonia and about the Cape of Good Hope. There are twenty species. The wings of the penguin are reduced to mere flippers used in diving only. The common penguin of Patagonia is about three feet in length and has a stout, ungainly body with a small head and pointed bill. Its upper parts and flippers are covered with black, scale-like feathers. Its under parts are white. The penguin is at home in the water. By means of its flippers it dives like a loon and pursues fish with all the speed of a cormorant, but it is exceedingly awkward on land. The legs are placed farther back on the body than those of a duck, so that it stands almost upright on land, resting partly on a stiff tail. The penguin is inconceivably more awkward than the duck. Its track on new fallen snow is like that made by a pair of snowshoes, only smaller, with a central furrow scraped by its tail. Penguins collect on rocky islands and lay their eggs in enormous colonies. Far from being shy, they come waddling about a camp in a whimpering, inquisitive way. A large specimen has been known to attain a weight of seventy-eight pounds. The emperor penguin of the Antarctic region breeds during the long Antarctic night. Travelers state that it holds one egg on the upper part of the foot and hatches it there. The young chick is kept off the ice and snow by sitting in the same place. A fold of skin and feathers drops down from the abdomen and forms a cozy shelter. See Auk

One day we were pulling along at a good rate landing stores, when suddenly a heavy body shot out of the water, struck the seaman who was pulling stroke, and dropped with a thud into the bottom of the boat. The arrival was an Adelie penguin. It was hard to say who was the most astonished--the penguin, at the result of its leap on to what it had doubtless thought was a rock, or we, who so suddenly took on board this curious passenger. The sailors in the boat looked upon this incident as an omen of good luck. There is a tradition among seamen that the souls of old sailors, after death, occupy the bodies of penguins, as well as of albatrosses; this idea, however, does not prevent the mariners from making a hearty meal off the breasts of the penguins when opportunity offers.

The penguins were round us in large numbers. We had not had any time to make observations of them, being so busily employed discharging the ship, but just at this particular time our attention was called to a couple of these birds which suddenly made a spring from the water and landed on their feet on the ice-edge, having cleared a vertical height of twelve feet. It seemed a marvelous jump for these small creatures to have made, and shows the rapidity with which they must move through the water to gain the impetus that enables them to clear a distance in vertical height four times as great as their own, and also how unerring must be their judgment in estimating the distance and height when performing this feat.--E. H. Shackleton, in The National Geographic Magazine.