This procedure continued for many hours, the penguins that day observing this extraordinary behaviour, the most astonishing part of which lay in the accuracy of their drill-like movements, so that we might have been watching a lot of soldiers on parade. Perhaps the sudden motions of these bodies of birds were brought about by a sound uttered by the single bird which acted as leader, though we did not hear this. The actual reason for this departure from their usual customs is beyond my knowledge. There was nothing to be seen to account for it, but the penguins evidently obeyed some instinct which affected them all on this and two subsequent occasions, when the same thing took place. My own idea is that in former times the penguins used to mass together as other birds do, before their annual migration, perhaps as far back as the day when their wings were adapted for flight, and that the phenomenon described above was a relic of their bygone instincts. When the chicks' down has been moulted and their plumage acquired, they proceed to the water's edge and here they learn to swim. In the autumn of 1912, at a small rookery which I came upon on Inexpressible Island, I had an opportunity of watching their first attempts in this direction. Crowds of young Adélies were to be seen on the pebbly beach below their rookery, much of the ice having disappeared at this late season, leaving bare patches of shingle which were very suitable for the first swimming lesson. Many old birds paddled in for a short distance, and crouching in a few inches of water, splashed about with their flippers to give the youngsters a lead. Some of the latter needed little encouragement, and took readily to the strange element, very soon swimming about in deep water, but others seemed more timid, and these latter were urged in every possible way by the old birds, some of whom could be seen walking in and out of the water, and so doing what they could to give their charges confidence. In this duty one or two old birds might be seen with a little crowd of youngsters, so that evidently the social instincts which gave rise to the crèche system in the first place were extended to the tuition of the young and thus to their preparation for the journey north. [Illustration: Fig. 69. "When she broke out, they became reconciled" (Page 106)] [Illustration: Fig. 70. Adélie's Nests on Top of Cape Adare, to reach which they must make a Precipitous Climb of 1000 feet (Page 98)]