CHAPTER IX. 
Flightless Birds. 
“And first, I praise the nobler traits 
Of birds preceding Noah, 
The giant clan, whose meat was Man, 
Dinornis, Apteryx, Moa.’’ —Courthope. 
The steamer duck—The owl parrot—the flightless grebe of Titicaca—The dodo 
and solitaire—The ostrich tribe—The penguin’s wings. 
aL. poet who penned the above lines thought more of rhymes 
than of reasons—as Poets so often do. What were their 
“‘ nobler traits”? ? Heomits to mention them. None of them were 
ever carnivorous: and the Apteryx could by no stretch of the 
imagination be called a “ giant.” The one outstanding feature 
which does distinguish these birds he fails entirely to appreciate 
—and this is their flightless condition. 
A flightless bird is an anomaly. Yet there are some who 
profess to believe that this state affords us an insight into the 
early stages of the Evolution of the wing. As a matter of fact 
it demonstrates the exact opposite—its degeneration. 
How is it that birds ever came to such a pass? A study of 
living flightless birds, and birds that are well on the way to this 
condition, will afford us a ready answer. 
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