CHAPTER IX 
Flightless Birds 
‘And first, I praise the nobler traits 
Of birds preceding Noah, 
The giant clan, whose meat was Man, 
Dinornis, Apteryx, Moa.” 
CouRTHOPE, 
The steamer duck—The owl parrot—The flightless greeb of Titicaca—The 
dodo and solitaire—The ostrich tribe—The penguin’s wings. 
HE poet who penned the above lines thought more of 
thymes than of reasons—as Poets so often do. What 
were their ‘nobler traits”? He omits to mention them. 
None of them were ever carnivorous: and the Apteryx could 
by no stretch of the imagination be called a “ giant.” The 
one outstanding feature which does distinguish these birds 
he fails entirely to appreciate—and this is their flightless 
condition. 
A flightless bird is an anomaly. Yet there are some who 
profess to believe that this state affords us an insight into the 
_ early stages of the Evolution of the wing. As a matter of 
fact it demonstrates the exact opposite—its degeneration. 
How is it that birds ever came to such a pass? A study 
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