96 Prof. R. Owen on the Solitaire. 
Pezophaps solitaria was the largest kind of land bird ob- 
served by the first settlers in the island of Rodriguez. 
It differed in no other respect from the class-characters of 
the other birds of that island save in the inability to fly by the 
action of its wings. 
There were no enemies native to the island able to take 
advantage of that disablement. 
“Tl ne s’y trouve aucune animal 4 quatre pieds, que des 
rats, des lézards, & des tortues de terre, desquelles y a trois 
différents espéces,’”’ writes Leguat in his interesting little 
book *. 
The Solitaires had no call for practising or endeavouring 
to effect that hardest and most strenuous mode of locomotion 
to obtain sustenance or fulfil any of the conditions of preser- 
vation of the individual or of the species; they were never 
scared into such violent exercise. 
Upon these facts I found a conclusion as to how the specific 
character of wings, useless as such, came to be; and this con- 
clusion as to Fezophaps solitaria is the same which I have set 
forth more at length in relation to Didus ineptus +, and which 
I deem to be applicable to the still larger terrestrial birds 
discovered, as in the case of Mpyornis, Dinornis, Aptornis, 
Notornis, Cnemiornis, in similar geographical and associated 
zoological conditions—these birds, like the Dodo and Soli- 
taire, having become extirpated through alterations of the 
latter conditions, 7. e. by introduction of species new to their 
island-homes, and with dispositions and powers destructive of 
such flightless birds. Thus is illustrated the origin of species 
by a condition of the way of work of a secondary law sug- 
gested by Lamarck. 
Two alternative hypotheses have been propounded. One 
by Mr. Darwin, is discussed and conjecturally exemplified by 
the authors of the paper ‘‘ On the Osteology of the Solitaire ” 
(loc. cit. pp. 49-51). The other hypothesis assumes that the 
Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, Scelidosaurus, and other Dinosau- 
rian reptiles walked on the hind pair of legs, like birds, and 
initiated that class by becoming transmuted into the warm- 
blooded, feathered, but wingless species. No suggestion has 
* Voyage et Avantures de Francois Leguat, & de ses Compagnons, 
en deux isles désertes des Indes Orientales. Avec la relation des choses — 
les plus remarquables qu’ils ont observées dans l’Isle Maurice, a Batavia, 
au Cap de Bonne-Espérance, dans I’Isle St.-Héléne, & en d’autres en- 
droits de leur Route. Le tout enriché de Cartes & de Figures. Tome Pre- 
mier & Tome Second (12mo). A Londres, chez David Mortier, Marchand 
Libraire. 1708. 
+ ‘Memoir on the Dodo,’ 4to, 1866, pp. 49-51. 
