Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1916 — GO THROUGH QUEER ANTICS [ARTICLE]

GO THROUGH QUEER ANTICS

Group of Penguins, Seen at a Distance, Appear to Ape Assemblage of Human Beings. The strangest inhabitants of the antarctic continent are the birds called penguins. A company of them, seen at a distance on the polar snows, bear so striking a resemblance to an assemblage of human beings that explorers unaccustomed to their appearance have often been startled by the momentary belief that they had come upon a tribe of short, stout men, dressed in black, or blue and white, and greeting their visitors with the most extraordinary gesticulations. There is one species of these res markable birds, known as the Emperor penguin, because it seems to mimic the well-known figure of Napoleon, in his white vest and trousers and gray coat, which sometimes attains a height of between three and four feet and a weight of eighty or ninety pounds. Walking erect on his short legs, the emperor makes a salute by lowering his long beak on his round breast, and’then begins a long discourse in his strange, raucous language, and if there is no response he repeats the performance again and again, expecting each time an answer.