Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/76

penguin rookery by the ship during the coming summer. But I am not blind to the difficulties there may be in her doing this.

A very interesting fact we saw at the rookery this time was that these birds are so anxious to incubate an egg that they will incubate a rounded lump of ice instead, just as before we noticed them incubate a dead and frozen chick, if they were unable to secure a living one. Both Bowers and I, in the failing light, mistook these rounded dirty lumps of ice for eggs, and picked them up as eggs before we realised what they were. One of them I distinctly saw dropped by a bird, and it was roughly egg-shaped and of the right size—hard, dirty and semi-translucent ice. Another was, as I thought, a deformed egg, and as such I picked it up. It was shaped thus:

I also saw one of the birds return and tuck one of these ice 'nest-eggs' on to its feet, under the abdominal flap. I had a real egg in my hand, so I put it down on the ice close to this bird, and the bird at once left the lump of ice and shuffled to the real egg and pushed it in under its flap on to the feet. It apparently knew the difference, and it shows how strong is the desire to brood over something.