Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/513

P E N P E N 491 unfaithful, that she went to Sparta and thence to Mantinea, where she died and where her tomb was shown (Pausan., viii. 12). Ac cording to others, after the death of Odysseus she married Telegonus (son of Odysseus and Circe) in yiea, or in the Islands of the Blest. The name is connected with TTTJVOS, irrivri, "woof," and hence means "weaver." The Homeric form is I enelopeia. PENGUIN, the name (of very uncertain origin) of a flightless sea-bird, 1 but, so far as is known, first given to one inhabiting the seas of Newfoundland, as in Hore s "Voyage to Cape Breton," 1536 (Hackluyt, Researches, iii. pp. 168-170), which subsequently became known as the Great Auk or GARE-FOWL (vol. x. p. 78) ; and, though the French equivalent Pingouin 2 preserves its old application, at the present day, the word Penguin is by English ornitho logists always used in a general sense for certain Birds inhabiting the Southern Ocean, called by the French Man- chots, the Spkenisddse of ornithologists, which in some respects form perhaps the most singular group of the whole Class, or at least we may say of the Carinate Subclass. For a long while their position was very much misunderstood, some of the best of recent or even living systematists having placed them in close company with the Alcidx or Auks, to which they bear only a relationship of analogy, as indeed had been perceived by a few ornithologists, who recognized in the Penguins a very distinct Order, Impennes. The view of the latter is hardly likely to be disputed in future, now that the anatomical researches of MM. Paul Gervais and Alix (Joiirn. de Zoologie, 1877, pp. 424-470), M. Filhol (Bull. Soc. Philomathi iie, ser. 7, vi. pp. 226-248), and above all of Prof. Watson (Zoology, Voy. Challenger, part xviii.) have put the independent position of the Spheniscidx in the clearest light. 3 The most conspicuous outward character presented by the Penguins is the total want of quills in their wings, which are as incapable of flexure as the nippers of a Cetacean, though they move freely at the shoulder-joint, and some at least of the species occasionally make use of them for progressing on land. In the water they are most efficient paddles, and are usually, if not always, worked alternately with a rotatory action. The plumage which clothes the whole body, leaving no bare spaces, generally consists of small scale-like feathers, many 1 Of the three derivations assigned to this name, the first is by Draytoii in 1613 (Polyolbion, Song 9), where it is said to be the Welsh pen gwijn, or "white head" ; the second, which seems to meet with Littre s approval, deduces it from the Latin pinyuis (fat) ; the third supposes it to be a corruption of "pin-wing" (Ann. Xat. History, ser. 4, iv. p. 133), meaning a bird that has undergone the operation of pinioning or, as in one part at least of England it is commonly called, "pin-winging." In opposition to the first of these hypotheses it has been urged (1) that there is no real evidence of any Welsh dis covery of the bird, (2) that it is very unlikely for the Welsh, if they did discover it, to have been able to pass on their name to English navigators, and (3) that it had not a white head, but only a patch of white thereon. To the second hypothesis Prof. Skeat (Dictionary, p. 433) objects that it "will not account for the suffix -in, and is therefore wrong ; besides which the Dutchmen [who were asserted to be the authors of the name] turn out to be Sir Francis Drake " and his men. In support of the third hypothesis Mr. Reeks wrote (Zoologist, ser. 2, p. 1854) that the people in Newfoundland who used to meet with this bird always pronounced its name "Pin wing." Prof. Skeat s inquiry (loc. cit.}, whether the name may not after all be South-American, is to be answered in the negative, since, so far as evidence goes, it was given to the North-American bird before the South-American was known in Europe. ~ 2 Gorfou has also been used by some French writers, being a corrup tion of Geirfuyl or Gare-fowl. 3 Though the present writer cannot wholly agree with the conclusions of the last of these investigators, his remarks (pp. 230-232) on the " Origin of the Penguins " are worthy of all attention. He considers that they are the surviving members of a group that branched off early from the primitive " avian " stem, but that at the time of their separation the stem had diverged so far from Reptiles as to possess true wings, though the metatarsal bones had not lost their distinctness and become fused into the single bone so characteristic of existing Birds. The ancestral Penguin, Prof. Watson argues, must have had functional wings, the muscles of which, through atrophy, have been converted into non-contractile tendinous bands. of them consisting only of a simple shaft without the development of barbs; but several of the species have the head decorated with long cirrhous tufts, and in some the tail- quills, which are very numerous, are also long. 4 In standing these birds preserve an upright position, gener ally resting on the "tarsus" 5 alone, but in walking or running on land this is kept nearly vertical, and their weight is supported by the toes alone. The most northerly limit of the Penguins range in the Atlantic is Tristan d Acunha, and in the Indian Ocean Am sterdam Island, but they also occur off the Cape of Good Hope and along the south coast of Australia, as well as on the south and east of New Zealand, while in the Pacific one species at least extends along the west coast of South America and to the Galapagos ; but north of the equator none are found. In the breeding season they resort to the most desolate lands in higher southern latitudes, and indeed have been met with as far to the southward as navigators have penetrated. Possibly the Falkland Islands may be regarded as the locality richest in species, 6 though, what ever may have been the case once, their abundance there King-Penguin (Aptenodytcs pennanti). as individuals does not now nearly approach what it is in many other places, owing doubtless to the ravages of man, whose advent is always accompanied by massacre and devastation on an enormous scale the habit of the help less birds, when breeding, to congregate by hundreds and thousands in what are called " Penguin-rookeries " contri buting to the ease with which their slaughter can be effected. Incapable of escape by flight, they are yet able to make enough resistance or retaliation (for they bite powerfully 4 The pterylographical characters of the Penguins are well described by Mr Hyatt (Proc. Boston Soc. Xat. History, 1871). Mr Bartlett has observed (Proc. Zool. Society, 1879, pp. 6-9) that, instead of moulting in the way that birds ordinarily do, Penguins, at least in passing from the immature to the adult dress, cast off the short scale-like feathers from their wings in a manner that he compares to " the shedding of the skin in a serpent." 5 The three metatarsals in the Penguins are not, as in other birds, united for the whole of their length, but only at the extremities, thus preserving a portion of their originally distinct existence, a fact probably attributable to arrest of development, since the researches of Prof. Gegeubaur shew that the embryos of all birds, so far as is known, possess these bones in an independent condition. More recently Prof. Marsh has found that in the Dinosaurian genus Ceratosaurus the metatarsals acquire a condition very similar to that which they present in the Penguins (Am. Journ. Science, Aug. 1884). 6 An interesting account of the Penguins of these islands is given by Capt. Abliott (P,f.t, I860, p. 336).