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." — Cotirthope. 



The steamer duck — The owl parrot — the flightless grebe of Titicaca — The dodo 

 and solitaire — The ostrich tribe — The penguin's wings. 



THE poet who penned the above lines thought n^ore of rhymes 

 than of reasons — as Poets so often do. What were their 

 " nobler traits " ? He omits 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 

 earlv 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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