In all the penguins the wings have been converted into a pair of flippers or paddles, incapable of flight, but with which the birds can propel themselves with wonderful speed in the water. It is only, however, when they dive that they use them in this way. Until then they swim with their webbed feet alone, like a duck, but as soon as they go down the wings are extended, and rapidly beat the water as if it were the air, whilst the feet close together and trail behind them like a tail. These birds, in fact, fly through the water, as others do through the air, but they do not look like birds at all, but much more like seals; and indeed the whole shape of a penguin is so much like that of a seal that one might almost mistake him for one, if it were not for his long, narrow bill. This, however, is only when he is in the water, and especially whilst swimming under it—if ever one has the chance of seeing him do that. When on land the bird presents a very different appearance. He then stands bolt upright, exposing, in a front view, the whole surface of throat, chest, and the lower ventral region. For the most part this is of a dazzling white, but in the king and emperor penguins the white passes upon the chest into a light but very lustrous yellow, which, intensifying as it mounts upwards, shines, at last, like the very sun itself. It is like a pale gold sunrise over pure white virgin snow, and as the beams rise higher they get more golden by degrees. Above this zone of colour the throat, as far as the bird’s forehead, is black, but with a vivid golden band on either side, whilst the beak is of a coral red. This distribution and contrast of colouring, with the beauty of the hues themselves, give to such large, upright birds a very striking and distinguished appearance, so that, though the purple robe and the diadem be wanting, one may well think, as one looks at them, that no real king or emperor, with these to help him, ever looked the part to greater perfection than do these two grand penguins who respectively bear their titles. But if one by itself looks magnificent—and to acknowledge that it does one has only to visit the Zoological Gardens, where a specimen is kept in a basin—how must hundreds of them look, standing side by side in long rows, like so many regiments of soldiers? That, indeed, is the general simile which those who have seen these penguin birds in their antarctic dwelling-places make use of, in order to describe their appearance to more stay-at-home people, and the resemblance is increased by their sometimes walking one behind the other in single file, especially when coming up from the water to take their place on the eggs. They walk upon their toes alone, as do some of our own sea-birds—the puffin, for instance, and often the guillemot—but when standing sink down upon the shank—or tarsus, as it is called—that bone which corresponds with our own ankle.