80 PEOFESSOE 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 Bidus 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 Buifon'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 2. 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 contmuance 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. meyeri) 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 Bidus, any 

 more than m Binornis, 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 im])erfection to these 

 anomalous organisms, however deficient they may be in those complicated structures 

 which we so much admii-e in other creatures. Each animal and plant has received its 

 peculiar organization for the pm-pose, not of exciting the admii-ation of other beings, 

 but of sustaining its oyvn 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 Naturolle, iSic, 4to, torn. xiv. " Degeneration des Animaus : " 1760. 

 ^ Philosophie Zoologique, 8vo, 1809, torn. i. chaps. 3, 6, & 7. 



' Agreeably 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. 



