n round, gave it to his wife and was
back on the rock (with his back turned) before you could say Killer
Whale. Every now and then he looked over his shoulder, to see where the
next stone might be.

I watched this for twenty minutes. All that time, and I do not know for
how long before, that wretched bird was bringing stone after stone. And
there were no stones there. Once he looked puzzled, looked up and swore
at the back of my friend on his rock, but immediately he came back, and
he never seemed to think he had better stop. It was getting cold and I
went away: he was coming for another.

The life of an Adelie penguin is one of the most unchristian and
successful in the world. The penguin which went in for being a true
believer would never stand the ghost of a chance. Watch them go to bathe.
Some fifty or sixty agitated birds are gathered upon the ice-foot,
peering over the edge, telling one another how nice it will be, and what
a good dinner they are going to have. But this is all swank: they are
really worried by a horrid suspicion that a sea-leopard is waiting to eat
the first to dive. The really noble bird, according to our theories,
would say, "I will go first and if I am killed I shall at any rate have
died unselfishly, sacrificing my life for my companions"; and in time
all the most noble birds would be dead. What they really do is to try and
persuade a companion of weaker mind to plunge: failing this, they hastily
pass a conscription act and push him over. And then--bang,
helter-skelter, in go all the rest.

They take turns in sitting on their eggs, and after many days the fathers
may be seen waddling down towards the sea with their shirt-fronts
muddied, their long trick done. It may be a fortnight before they return,
well-fed, clean, pleased with life, and with a grim determination to
relieve their wives, to do their job. Sometimes they are met by others
going to bathe. They stop and pass the time of day. Well! Perhaps it
would be more pleasant, and what does a day or two matter anyhow. They
turn; clean and dirty alike are off to the seaside again. This is when
they say, "The women are splendid."

Life is too strenuous for them to have any use for the virtues of
brotherly love, good works, charity and benevolence. When they mate the
best thief wins: when they nest the best pair of thieves hatch out their
eggs. In a long unbroken stream, which stretches down below the sea-ice
horizon, they march in from the