open sea. Some are walking on their human
feet: others tobogganing upon their shiny white breasts. After their long
walk they must have a sleep, and then the gentlemen make their way into
the already crowded rookery to find them wives. But first a suitor must
find, or steal, a pebble, for such are the penguin jewels: they are of
lava, black, russet or grey, with almond-shaped crystals bedded in them.
They are rare and of all sizes, but that which is most valued is the size
of a pigeon's egg. Armed with one of these he courts his maid, laying it
at her feet. If accepted he steals still more stones: she guards them
jealously, taking in the meantime any safe opportunity to pick others
from under her nearest neighbours. Any penguin which is unable to fight
and steal successfully fails to make a good high nest, or loses it when
made. Then comes a blizzard, and after that a thaw: for it thaws
sometimes right down by the sea-shore where the Adelies have their
nurseries. The eggs of the strong and wicked hatch out, but those of the
weak are addled. You must have a jolly good pile of stones to hatch eggs
after a blizzard like that in December 1911, when the rookeries were
completely snow-covered: nests, eggs, parents and all.

Once hatched the chicks grow quickly from pretty grey atoms of down to
black lumps of stomach topped by a small and quite inadequate head. They
are two or more weeks old, and they leave their parents, or their parents
leave them, I do not know which. If socialism be the nationalization of
the means of production and distribution, then they are socialists. They
divide into parents and children. The adult community comes up from the
open sea, bringing food inside them: they are full of half-digested
shrimps. But not for their own children: these, if not already dead, are
lost in a crowd of hungry tottering infants which besiege each
food-provider as he arrives. But not all of them can get food, though all
of them are hungry. Some have already been behindhand too long: they have
not managed to secure food for days, and they are weak and cold and very
weary.

"As we stood there and watched this race for food we were gradually
possessed with the idea that the chicks looked upon each adult coming up
full-bellied from the shore as not a parent only, but a food-supply. The
parents were labouring under a totally different idea, and intended
either to find their own infants and feed them, or else to assimilate
the