LIFE AND KINSHIP OF DINOSAURS. 617 



whilst the disuse of the wings during the pre-Maori aeons would lead to their atrophy. The 

 Laniarckian hypothesis has, in fact, this advantage over others of like kidney, that pliysi- 

 ology testifies to the relation of growth to exercise, and of waste to disuse, and so far votes 

 in favour of the conditions evoked by Lamarck as vera causae in transmutation. We recog- 

 nise in the stunted wings of the Dodo evidences of its affinity ; as, for example, by their close 

 conformity, save in size, and in the prominence of their processes for muscular attachments, 

 to the scapula, coracoid, brachial and antibrachial bones, carpus, metacarpus, &c., of the 

 perfect instrument of flight in truly winged birds, and such conformity of structure is agree- 

 able with the hypothesis of the origin of the Mauritian species of ground-pigeon through 

 descent or degeneration. The differences which the wing-bones of the Dodo present when 

 compared with their homologues in the Ic/uanodon is in the same degree adverse to the 

 hypothesis of its evolution from any such reptile, in the direction of ascent and improve- 

 ment. The same course of argument applies to the impennate Awk, the Cassowary, 

 Rhea, Ostrich, &c., as to the wingless birds of the Mascarene, Polynesian, or Melanesian 

 Islands. 



Confidence in the impartial exercise by Biologists of the logical faculty leads to the 

 conclusion that their science will accept the view of the Dodo as a degenerate Dove rather 

 than as an advanced Dinothere. But whence the dove .- Are we then, I will not say 

 driven, but rather guided, to the old belief that the winged bird was " created " in the 

 sense of being .miraculously made, at once, out of dust, agreeably with the alternative 

 hypothesis conceived by my critic ? Or, is a belief in a Dove's coming to be through the 

 operation of a secondary law still legitimate and germain to our truth-seeking faculties ? 

 Not necessarily relegating an honest inquirer to the bottomless pit of Atheism, if he 

 should happen to ask : — AVere there no volant vertebrates of earlier date and lower grade 

 than the " Fowls of the Air" ? 



Without knowing or pretending to know the way of operation of the secondary cause, 

 the vast increase of knowledge-stores of biological phenomena makes it as impossible to com- 

 prehend them intelligibly in any degree, on the assumption of primary or direct creation of 

 species, as it was impossible for Copernicus to understand and explain the vast accession of 

 astronomical facts in his day, on the belief of the subservient relation of sun to earth, of the 

 posteriority of the creation of the luminary to that of the light-receiver, and of their respec- 

 tive relations of motion, as received in his day. To the objection, how, on his assumption 

 of the diurnal rotation of the earth, loose things remained on its surface, Copernicus 

 could offer no explanation. Neither has the Biologist been able, as yet, to explain how 

 the Ramphorhynchus became transmuted into the Archeopteryx. It is open, of course, 

 for any one to deny such change. What seems to me to be legitimate, in giving an account 

 of the labours that have resulted in a certain accession to the know-ledge of extinct forms 

 of cold-blooded, oviparous, air-breathing Vertebrates, is the indication of the respective 

 vicinity of certain groups of such now much reduced class to the warm-blooded oviparous 

 Vertebrate air-breathers which in our times so greatly prevail in life's theatre. 



