f pumiceous lava, in shape
like the halves of volcanic bombs, and with bunches of long, drawn-out,
hair-like shreds of glass in their interior."[355] This was Pele's hair.
Gran was a bit sick from sulphur dioxide fumes afterwards. They reached
Cape Royds on the 16th, the very successful trip taking fifteen days.

Meanwhile Shackleton's old hut was very pleasant at this time of year: in
winter it was a bit too draughty. With bright sunlight, a lop on the sea
which splashed and gurgled under the ice-foot, the beautiful mountains
all round us, and the penguins nesting at our door, this was better than
the Beardmore Glacier, where we had expected to be at this date. What
then must it have been to the six men who were just returned from the
very Gate of Hell? And the food: "Truly Shackleton's men must have fed
like turkey-cocks from all the delicacies here: boiled chicken, kidneys,
mushrooms, ginger, Garibaldi biscuits, soups of all kinds: it is a
splendid change. Best of all are the fresh-buttered skua's eggs which we
make for breakfast. In fact, life is bearable with all that has been
unknown so long at last cleared up, and our anxieties for Campbell's
party laid at rest."[356]

For three weeks I worked among the Adelie penguins at Cape Royds, and
obtained a complete series of their embryos. It was always Wilson's idea
that embryology was the next job of a vertebral zoologist down south. I
have already explained that the penguin is an interesting link in the
evolutionary chain, and the object of getting this embryo is to find out
where the penguins come in.[357] Whether or no they are more primitive
than other nonflying birds, such as the apteryx, the ostrich, the rhea
and the moa, which last is only just extinct, is an open question. But
wingless birds are still hanging on to the promontories of the southern
continents, where there is less rivalry than in the highly populated
land areas of the north. It may be that penguins are descended from
ancestors who lived in the northern hemisphere in a winged condition
(even now you may sometimes see them try to fly), and that they have been
driven towards the south.

If penguins are primitive, it is rational to infer that the most
primitive penguin is farthest south. These are the two Antarcticists, the
Emperor and the Adelie. The latter appears to be the more numerous and
successful of the two, and for this reason we are inclined to search
among the Emperors as being among the