EXTINCT SPECIES. 149 



to the mind the completest of all possible departures from 

 established type. 



Thoughts such as these result from our artificial systems 

 and classifications. Apart from these, the condition of giant 

 walking-birds that were, and to a limited extent still are, will 

 be found to harmonise well with surrounding conditions. 

 Suppose we take the case of the ostrich for example, this 

 bird being the chief living representative of giant bird-life 

 remaining to us from the past. In the ostrich, then, do we 

 view a creature so perfectly adapted to conditions which sur- 

 round it, that no need falls short and no quality is in excess. 

 A complete bird in most anatomical characteristics, it borrows 

 others from another type. The sum of the vital elements 

 which normally, had the ostrich been like flying birds, should 

 have gone to endow the wings, has been directed towards the 

 legs and feet, and thereupon concentrated. Bird qualities 

 and beast qualities have mingled, and, as we now perceive, 

 have harmonised. If to the ostrich flying is denied if it 

 can only travel on foot, yet is it an excellent pedestrian. A 

 quality of which it has been deprived we now find to have 

 been transmuted into another quality the ostrich has found 

 its equivalent. 



Keflecting thus, we cease to pity the ostrich. We begin 

 to see that Nature has been supremely wise, our classifica- 

 tions only having led us into error. A new thought dawns 

 upon our apprehension : instead of longer regarding the 

 ostrich as furnishing an example of nature's bird -creative 

 power gone astray, we come to look upon this creature as 

 designed upon the type of ordinary walking animals, and 

 having some bird characteristics added. Assuredly this point 

 of view is better than the other ; for whereas the first reveals 

 nature to us through the distorting medium of an abstrac- 

 tion, the other shows us nature herself. It is not a matter 

 of complete certainty that the bird-type as naturalists explain 

 and define it in their systems exists; but there can be no 



