Page:The birds of Tierra del Fuego - Richard Crawshay.djvu/288

154 them largely—if not wholly on occasion—with the means of subsistence.

It is everywhere common in these waters; but I was never so fortunate as to see with my own eyes one of their wonderful colonies.

Forster, who accompanied Cook in the "Resolution" in 1774, was the first to give this Penguin its scientific name. Of its habits he says:—"In Insula Novi Anni. Insular Statuum vicina, multa millia hujus speciei vidimus e mari escendere et loca altiora insulae petere, ubi satura e piscatu marino, quem gregatim instituunt, inter cespites dactylidis glomerata3 victitant, dormiunt, et nidulantur post Pelecanos et Diomedeas. Vox rauca, clangens, et etiam crotali instar crepitans, fere asina. Homines et phocas non metuunt, eisque vix de via decedmit; et si evadere homines nequeunt, tum caput horsum vorsum in utrumque latus, quasi mirabundte, torquent et subito vehementissimo morsu pedes appropinquantium appetunt. Aliquot centum a nautis nostris fustibus necata, in navem avecta, excoriataque, omnibus elixa assataque in cibum cessere, nil minus quam ingratum."

Cook himself mentions meeting with "prodigious numbers."

He adds:—"I cannot say they are good eating. I have indeed made several good meals of them; but it was for want of better victuals."

As early as 1578. Sir Francis Drake, at the time of his naming Elizabeth Island, mentions finding on two smaller islands near it, one of which was subsequently named Penguin Island and is now known as Santa Magdalena, "great store of strange birds which could not flie at all, nor yet runne so fast as that they could escape us with their Hues; in body they are less than a Goose, and bigger than a Mallard, short and thicke sett together, having no feathers, but instead thereof a certaine hard and matted downe; their beakes are not much unlike the bills of Crowes, they lodge and breed upon the land, where making earthes, as the Conies doe, in the ground, they lay their egges and bring up their 3'oung; their feeding and provision to live on