THE FIRST FLUTTERINGS OF THE WING. 97 
genus, yet one not less remarkable as a maternal precaution. I refer 
to a very rare gorfou—-which I have seen in no other museum— 
attired in the rough skin of a quadruped, resembling a goat’s fleece, 
but more shining, perhaps, in the living animal, and certainly imper- 
meable to water. 
To link together the birds which do not fly, we must find the 
connecting point in the navigator of the desert—the bird-camel, the 
ostrich, resembling the camel itself in its internal structure. At least, 
if its imperfect wings cannot raise it above the earth, they assist it 
powerfully in walking, and endow it with extraordinary swiftness: 
g, 
it is the sail with which it skims its arid African ocean. 
Let us return to the penguin, the true starting-point of the 
series—to the penguin, whose rudimentary pinion cannot be employed 
as a sail, does not aid it in walking, is only an indication, like a 
memorial of nature. 
She loosens her bonds, she rises with difficulty in a first attempt 
at flight by means of two strange figures, which appear to us both 
grotesque and pretentious. The penguin is not of these; a simple, 
silly creature, you see that it never had the ambition to fly. But 
here are they who emancipate themselves, who seem in quest of the 
adornment or the grace of motion. The gorfou may be taken for a 
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penguin which has decided to quit its condition. It assumes a 
coquettish tuft of plumes, that throws into high relief its ugliness. 
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