555

47

Upon these facts I found a conclusion as to how the specific character of wings,
useless as such, came to be ; and this conclusion as to Pezophaps solitaria is the same
which I have set forth more at length in relation to Didus ineptus 1, and which I deem
to be applicable to the still larger terrestrial birds discovered, as in the case of AEpy-
ornis, Dinornis, Aptornis, Notornis, Cnemiornis, in similar geographical and associated
zoological conditions - these birds, like the Dodo and Solitaire, having become extirpated
through alterations of the latter conditions, i.e. by introduction of species new to their
island homes, and with dispositions and powers destructive of such flightless birds.
Thus is illustrated the origin of species by a condition of the way of work of a secondary
law suggested by Lamarck.

Two alternative hypotheses have been propounded. One, by Mr. Darwin, is discussed
and conjecturally exemplified by the authors of the paper "On the Osteology of the
Solitaire " (Phil. Trans. 1869, pp 356-358). The other hypothesis assumes that the
Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, Scelidosaurus, and other Dinorsaurian reptiles walked on the
hind pair of legs , like birds, and initiated that class by becoming transmuted into the
warm-blooded, feathered, but wingless species. No suggestion has been made by the
authors or acceptors of this hypothesis as to the way of operation or conditions of the

*Insert illustration

transmutation. But I have been favoured with a photograph from New York of the
"Restorations according to Professors Huxley and Waterhouse Hawkins " of the
reptilian ancestors of the Moas, now, or to be, placed in the Public Park of that City.

In most of the instances of wingless birds affinity to more favoured or normal mem-
bers of the feathered class has been traced.

The Penguins (Impennes) cannot be disassociated from the smaller Urinatores, which
retain the volant function of the wings.

Alea impennis is not generically separable, in judicious taxonomy, from the smaller
swiftly flying Alea torda.

The genera Aptornis and Notornis with keelless breast-bones, cannot be divorced
from the family of Coots.

1 'Memoir on the Dodo,' 4to, 1866, pp.49-51.