PEDIGREE OF BIRDS. 523 



ArchcBopteryx, let us give two illustrations of the manner in 

 which embryology confirms the evolution theory. 



Speaking of his work on the development of the fowl, 

 W. K. Parker wrote in 1868 : — "Whilst at work I seemed 

 to myself" to have been endeavouring to decipher a 

 palimpsest, and one not erased and written upon again just 

 once, but five or six times over. Having erased, as it were, 

 the characters of the culminating type — those of the gaudy 

 Indian bird — I seemed to be amongst the sombre Grouse ; 

 and then, towards incubation, the characters of the Sand- 

 grouse and Hemipod stood out before me. Rubbing these 

 away, in my downward work the form of the Tinamou 

 looked me in the face ; then the aberrant Ostrich seemed 

 to be described in large archaic characters ; a little while, 

 and these faded into what could just be read off as pertain- 

 ing to the Sea-Turtle ; whilst underlying the whole, the Fish, 

 in its simplest Myxinoid form, could be traced in morpho- 

 logical hieroglyphics." 



More than twenty years later, the same accomplished 

 embryologist described the development of the " Reptilian 

 Bird " — Opisthocomus cristatus. In this form the unhatched 

 chick has a paw-like hand, three clawed fingers and a rudi- 

 ment of a fourth, a wrist of numerous carpal elements, and 

 many other features suggestive of reptilian descent. It is 

 not surprising, then, that to Parker, a bird seemed as '' a 

 transformed and, one might even say, a glorified Reptile, 

 the quasi-imago of the reptile, which takes the place of an 

 active pupa, the fish doing duty, in the present economy of 

 nature, as the larva." 



It is likely that Birds arose from the Dinosaurian stock, 

 but by what steps and under what impulses we do not know. 

 To one it is enough to say that the evolution was accom- 

 plished gradually in the course of natural selection by the 

 fostering of fit variations and the elimination of the disad- 

 vantageous ; to another it seems that the incipient birds 

 were ^'■fevered representatives of reptiles, progressing in the 

 direction of greater and greater constitutional activity ; " 

 but both these suggestions leave much in the dark, leave us 

 still to " wonder how the slow, cold-blooded, scaly beast ever 

 became transformed into the quick, hot-blooded, feathered 

 bird, the joy of creation." 



