﻿90 



FOSSIL REPTILIA OP THE 



hypothesis than the Darwinian one, and I am ultimtely lead to propound the Struthionidce 

 as exemplifications of Buffon's belief in the origin of species by way of degeneration - 

 on other grounds than those on which my anonymous Critic, above cited (p. 87), views 

 the Papuan and Boschisman in relation to an antecedent higher, indeed perfect, form 

 of man. 



Let us suppose, for example, an island affording abundant subsistence to vegetarian 

 birds, and, happily for them, to be destitute of creatures able or desirous to destroy such 

 birds. If the food was wholly, or chiefly, on the surface the power of traversing such 

 surface would be of as much advantage to the bird as to the herbivorous quadruped. 

 As flight calls for more effort than course; so cursorial progression would be more 

 commonly practised in such a happy island for obtaining the daily food. The advent or 

 proximity of a known element of clanger might excite the quicker mode of motion ; the 

 bird would then betake itself by a hurried flight to a safer locality. If, however, certain 

 insular birds had never known a foe, the stimulus to the use of the wings would be wanting 

 in species needing only to traverse the ground in quest of food. In the case of New Zealand, 

 for example, the roots of wide-spread ferns, being rich in farinaceous and amylaceous princi- 

 ples, the habit of scratching them out of the ground would lead to full development of the 

 muscles of the leg and foot. So, such daily habitual exercise of. legs and feet by uuscared 

 Rasorials would lead in successive generations to strange developments of hind-limbs ; 

 whilst the disuse of the wings during the pre-Maori seons would lead to their atrophy. The 

 Lamarckian hypothesis has, in fact, this advantage over others of like kidney, that physi- 

 ology testifies to the relation of growth to exercise, and of waste to disuse, and so far votes 

 .in favour of the conditions evoked by Lamarck as vera causes in transmutation. We recog- 

 nise in the stunted wings of the Dodo, for example, their close conformity, save in size, and 

 in the prominence of their processes for muscular attachments, to the scapula, coracoid, 

 brachial and antibrachial bones, carpus, metacarpus, &c, of the perfect instrument of flight 

 in truly winged birds, evidences of its affinity ; and such conformity of structure is agree- 

 able with the hypothesis of the origin of the Mauritian species of ground-pigeon through 

 descent or degeneration. The differences which the wing-bones of the Dodo present when 

 compared with their homologues in the Iguanodon is in the same degree adverse to the 

 hypothesis of its evolution from any such reptile, in the direction of ascent and improve- 

 ment. The same course of argument applies to the impennate Awk, the Cassowary, 

 Rhea, Ostrich, &c, as to the wingless birds of the Mascarene, Polynesian, or Melanesian 

 Islands. 



Confidence in the impartial exercise by Biologists of the logical faculty leads to the 

 conclusion that their science will accept the view of the Dodo as a degenerate Dove rather 

 than as an advanced Dinothere. But whence the dove? Are we then, I will not say 

 driven, but rather guided, to the old belief that the winged bird was " created " in the 

 sense of being .miraculously made, at once, out of dust, agreeably with the alternative 

 hypothesis conceived by my critic ? Or, is a belief in a Dove's coming to be through the 



