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until the individuals which continued the habit persishing ; 
the shorter, and shorter winged, and less, and less adven 
turous birds alone survived to continue this degraded 
advantage to their progeny: and that this process con- 
tinued to the vanishing point of the wings through 
degradation by disuse: all ending in a progeny without 
any wings at all; but I give Mr. Wallace’s theory in his 
own words: others may, perhaps will, draw a different 
deduction from mine. He is speaking of the opposite 
case of Pigeons with immensely powerful wings, which 
they would be unlikely to make use of unless ‘‘ blown out 
to sea” (these wings do not seem at all aborted through disuse, 
one of many details left unaccounted for) and he says theirs is 
the opposi/e modification to that of the Apteryx, and Dodo: 
and may be explained by Darwin’s theory concerning the 
Madeiran beetles some of which have better developed wings 
than the same species on the Continent, to enable them to 
return to land after an involuntary trip to sea, but some 
having no wings at all, cannot leave the coast therefore, 
“bad flying is worse than not flying at all.” I fail to see 
how this explains the Pigeon’s case. 
He says to account for the Apteryx, &c., “dad flying 
was worse than not flying at all. So, while in such islands 
as New Zealand and Mauritius, far from all land, it was 
safer for a ground-feeding bird not to fly at all, and the 
short-winged indtwviduals continually surviving, prepared 
the way for a wingless group of birds,” the process, in 
words, is easy and brief. 
Why was not the degradation arrested at that point 
where the birds must have found their evil habit impractic- 
able, and given up the effort; but yet should have trans- 
mitted such Auk-like wings as might be left to them to 
their posterity: this is one of the processes left to the 
unassisted imagination of the disciple of ‘Evolution’ to 
unravel; for such examples are half worked out. 
