CHAPTER IX 



Flightless Birds 



" And first, I praise the nobler traits 

 Of birds preceding Noah, 

 The giant clan, whose meat was Man, 

 Dinomis, 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. 



THE poet who penned the above lines thought more of 

 rhymes 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 win^. As a matter of 

 fact it demonstrates the exact opposite — dts degeneration. 



How is it that birds ever came to such a pass ? A stuciy 



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