  We present experimental evidence of the universal emergence of the Peregrine
soliton predicted in the semi-classical (zero-dispersion) limit of the focusing
nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equation [Comm. Pure Appl. Math. {\bf 66}, 678
(2012)]. Experiments studying higher-order soliton propagation in optical fiber
use an optical sampling oscilloscope and frequency-resolved optical gating to
characterise intensity and phase around the first point of soliton compression
and the results show that the properties of the compressed pulse and background
pedestal can be interpreted in terms of the Peregrine soliton. Experimental and
numerical results reveal that the universal mechanism under study is highly
robust and can be observed over a broad range of parameters, and experiments
are in very good agreement with numerical simulations.
