ANTARCTIC TALES

Taranaki Daily News, 4 June 1935, Page 2

ANTARCTIC TALES

BEHAVIOUR OF PENGUINS. * WITTICISMS OF SCIENTIST. It is evident that Melbourne University has,, in its new Vice-Chancellor (Dr. R. E. Priestley), a first-class humorist as well as a renowned scholar and scientist, says the Wellington Post Sydney correspondent. Dr. Priestley was in a high position at Cambridge before he recently took up his duties, at Melbourne. He visited Antarctica with Scott and members of file British Antarctica Expedition of 1910-1913, and he and four companians were marooned in a snow dug-out on Cape Adare for six months while pack-ice prevented the vessel Terra Nova from picking them up. The men lived on half rations, supplemented by a few seals, but for the penguins Antarctica was a paradise of food. It was on his experiences there and on the odd behaviour of penguins that Dr. Priestley delivered a delightfully amusirig address to the Melbourne University Association. • “There were 750,000 penguins near ouifirst camp,” Dr. Priestley said. “We could not count them, so surveyed them. Once they have slept fori 24 hours, on their arrival, the males set out to court the females. They are not easy to please. They look at all the females and turn away with a nasty sneer. When a male has chosen the handsomest one he lays a stone at her feet. If she accepts him, she picks up the stone and puts it away for the house. If she does nOt like him she, hits him over ihe head" with her flippers. You can imagine what the unfortunate bird looks like after a hundred refusals.” BIRDS’ OUTINGS ON THE ICE. "Sometimes the penguins choose a piece of ice and go round the coast, have a shrimp tea and a bathe, and, come by the next excursion steamer, just like you and I,” Dr. Priestley said. “Sometimes they have boxing matches. They hit each other with their flippers, making a noise something like the noise made by a small boy running a stick along an iron fence; then, instead of retiring to the comers of the ring as we do when we are tired, they lean against each other, get their breath, and begin all over again. 1 “Often at the time of the penguins’ homeward journey a group would stand arguing at the brink of an ice cliff six feet in height. After a time one of them would fall in. Afterward I saw why. Usually a sea leopard would be waiting under the cliff. When one-.went in the others would all peer over the edge to see if he was all right. If he were they would all dive in at once. If he did not appear they would turn away saying, ‘Poor old Bill; bad luck, wasn’t it?”

At the camp at Cape Adare, Dr. Priestley said, an hour was spent every day chipping pieces off a frozen piece of seal with his geological hammer. It was very dark in the hut and pieces would fly in every direction. "Sometimes the first thing I would know about my dinner would be a sharp piece in the eye,” he added. “At the end of an hour all the pieces would be collected from our sleeping bags, but as it was dark we never knew what would be handed in for the stew. Once I was accused of taking one of my companions’ spills, Which was a piece of tarry rope about two feet long. Since. I was the only non-smoker. I was indignant, but I found it later—m my second pannikin of stew. Once a penguin’s flipper, which had been an excellent pot-scrub for five months, turned up in the stew. It was a very characteristic flavour.”

“They were the wort»t days I can remember,” Dr. Priestley said. “For six months we lived in an atmosphere foul with smoke and blubber. We did not wash for six months. Our food consisted of slender rations of sugar, chocolate and biscuits—harder than dog biscuits—tea and coffee. Our dream life was vivid. The dreams were nearly all of food and of relief parties. We all had one common dream, of knowing that there was a shop outside. Some thought it was a tobacconist shop. I always dreamed it was a sweet shop. In our dreams we would fight our way through the blizzard outside to the shop, to find that it was early-closing day and that it was 1 o'clock.”