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THE NESTING RHEA

though whether this is of much advantage is doubtful, considering its silence. In any case these facts seem to point to a shorter period of flightlessness in this than in the other members of the great ostrich-like birds, which culminated in the huge moas of New Zealand and the roc or Aepyornis of Madagascar. There are three different kinds of rhea, and it is interesting to notice that one of these, called after Darwin, Rhea darwini, has a rather spotted plumage suggestive on one colour theory of greater antiquity. It has often been pointed out that stripes and spots are not only found in the young of many creatures which are unspotted and without stripes in the adult condition, but that low forms of animals are more variegated in this way than higher types. Like the struthious birds generally, with the exception. of the apteryx, whose claims to be associated with them are less, the rhea is by no means invariably a mild-tempered fowl. As is so common with the animate creation, the excitement of the breeding season finds a vent in continued hostility to any approaching man or beast. Mr. Hudson considers that it is positively dangerous to come within the range of vision of a cock rhea who is engaged in watching the laying of eggs by his numerous suite. Though ferocious to strangers, the cock bird performs himself the severe duties of incubation, a procedure in which he resembles other ratites. At other times the rheas seek the society of other beasts, and are reported to occur among herds of deer with which they are on terms of amity. It has been pointed out that in this the rhea simulates the ostrich, which has a similar fondness for frequenting herds of zebras.

GOLD CRESTED PENGUIN (Eudyptes chrysocome)

This bird, like others of its tribe, is limited to the Antarctic region. The penguins inhabit the shores of

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GENERA OF PENGUINS

the various islands of the Antarctic ocean, from the Falklands in the west to New Zealand in the east, and as far north only as to the Cape of Good Hope. They are almost alone in their limitation to this region of the globe. Within this cold and inhospitable, though fish-teeming, expanse, the penguins are represented by a considerable number of forms, which have been arranged into at any rate five different generic types. These are Aptenodytes, Spheniscus, Eudyptes, Eudyptula and Pygosceles. Our particular type and five or six of the rest have been frequently on view at the Zoo, where they attract great attention from their grotesque form and their easy and lithe movements under water. On shore, and at the brink of their pools at the Zoo, they waddle or hop awkwardly; a small penguin which was some years ago in the renovated Fish House was clad on occasions by the keeper with a little coat, and hopped more energetically than, but with something of the air of, an elderly and obese gentleman. In fact the first observers of penguins took them, from their upright position and from being drawn up in lines, to be soldiers prepared to repel an invasion of their fastnesses. Far from being so prepared, the bulk of penguins are or were, for they may be in places a little more sophisticated, stupidly unaware of intended harm, and they could be knocked over by thousands with a stick. Obese penguins always are, as their very name, which is supposed to be connected with the Latin "pinguis," denotes. Some ingenious commentators have sought in Pen Gwin, i.e. "white head," a derivation of the pseudo-vernacular name by which everybody knows them now. The penguin is not a good goer upon dry land. His legs, rather swaddled up in skin, do not permit of an easy stride or even an efficient hop. But as the bird never goes away far from the sea, its proper home, this unfitness is not a serious matter

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, have a 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 porpoises 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

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