80 PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE 
” § 10. Conclusion. 
The affinities or place in nature of the Dodo being thus determined by the characters 
of its skeleton, but few words remain to be said on the bearings of present knowledge 
of this species upon other zoological generalizations. 
The researches and observations of naturalists have been carried out to such an extent 
as to support the conclusion that the Didus ineptus does not now live in any part of the 
world, and that it never existed save in that part of which the island of Mauritius 
may be a remnant. Consequently the species there originated; and the most intelli- 
gible conception of its mode of origin is that to which I have alluded in the description 
of the brain-case (p. 70). 
The Dodo exemplifies Buffon’s idea’ of the origin of species through departure from 
a more perfect original type by degeneration; and the known consequences of the 
disuse of one locomotive organ and extra use of another indicate the nature of the 
secondary causes that may have operated in the creation of this species of bird, agree- 
ably with Lamarck’s philosophical conception of the influence of such physiological con- 
ditions of atrophy and hypertrophy®. The young of all Doves are hatched with wings 
as small as in the Dodo: that species retained the immature character. ‘The main con- 
dition making possible the production and continuance of such a species in the island 
of Mauritius was the absence of any animal that could kill a great bird incapable of 
flight. The introduction of such a destroyer became fatal to the species which had lost 
such means of escape*. The Mauritian Doves (Columba nitidissima and C. meyert) that 
retained their powers of flight continue to exist there. 
As I have no reason to offer why one kind of Pigeon should have retained and another 
lost its powers of flight, nor am able to adduce a particle of evidence of the hypothetical 
degrees of diminution of the wing-bones to their stunted proportions in Didus, any 
more than in Dinornis, I feel that in the foregoing remarks I lay myself open to the 
rebuke of fellow-labourers who may think with the able authors who last treated of 
the present subject. 
They warn their readers to ‘‘ beware of attributing anything like imperfection to these 
anomalous organisms, however deficient they may be in those complicated structures 
which we so much admire in other creatures. Each animal and plant has received its 
peculiar organization for the purpose, not of exciting the admiration of other beings, 
but of sustaining its own existence. Its perfection, therefore, consists, not in the 
number or complication of its organs, but in the adaptation of its whole structure to 
the external circumstances in which it is destined to live. And, in this point of view, 
we shall find that every department of the organic creation is equally perfect, the 
! Histoire Naturelle, d&c., 4to, tom. xiv. “ Dégénération des Animaux: ” 1760, 
? Philosophie Zoologique, 8vo, 1809, tom. i. chaps. 3, 6, & 7. 
3 Acreeably with the principle of the “contest for existence” by which I explained the extinction of the 
species of Dinornis, Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. iv. p. 14, 1851. 
