. The bird; its form and function . have discarded this gift and have returned toa life in the sea, whence in long ages past their forebearshad crawled out upon land. As in the ostriches, therelics of flight-feathers have increased greatly in number,but have become small and scaly, and the wings havevirtually become flippers or fins. Instead of a given num-ber of feathers, divided into well-marked series, the pad-dles of a penguin are covered thickly with small feather-scales, and the rigidity of the wings, together with therotary movement at the shoulder-joint, make the propellerof a ship an
. The bird; its form and function . have discarded this gift and have returned toa life in the sea, whence in long ages past their forebearshad crawled out upon land. As in the ostriches, therelics of flight-feathers have increased greatly in number,but have become small and scaly, and the wings havevirtually become flippers or fins. Instead of a given num-ber of feathers, divided into well-marked series, the pad-dles of a penguin are covered thickly with small feather-scales, and the rigidity of the wings, together with therotary movement at the shoulder-joint, make the propellerof a ship an apt simile. The colour of the feather-scaleson the upper side of the wing is dark, like the back ofthe bird, but those on the under side have run rampant,the white and black being mixed irregularly, not corre-sponding even in the two wings of an individual bird. The outline of the wing is exactly like that of a sharksfin, the flatness and breadth including even the bones,while (also like a fin) all of the bending quality of a wing. CO i- bjD C ?, >^ i S 342 The Bird is lost,—all the flexibility of wrist and elbow. Withthese propellers the penguins fly through the water, withalmost the identical motion of a bird in the air. Thoughit is usually asserted that the wings move alternately,this was never the case with a pair of Black-footed Pen-guins which I carefully observed. As regards the speedof swimming, I found that one of these birds, though inbad health at the time and so weak that it could takebut a few steps on land, was able to progress under w^ater
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1906
