461 
The legs then monopolizing all the functions of locomotion would attain, through 
the concomitant frequency of exercise, proportional increase of power and size. 
Under these conditions may be comprehended the origin of the great flightless Anse- 
rine bird which is entered as a ‘species’ in ornithological catalogues under the name 
of Cnemiornis calcitrans. 
The same course of cogitation leads to the same conclusion as to the origin of 
Notornis, of Aptornis, and of Dinornis. The tendency to variation in size and propor; 
tions, after the reduction of wings to rudiments, leads to the minor modifications, called 
species, of such flightless genera. 
The alternative is to surrender thought upon the mode of origin of such genera and 
species, and to repose in the conclusion that by some inconceivable miraculous mani- 
festation of organizing force a male and female of Cnemiornis calcitrans, of Notornis 
mantelli, and of each species of Aptornis and Dinornis, were, at some remote and 
unknown point in time, created, with the fruitful power of propagating their kind; 
and that it was the pleasure of such Creator to construct their wings, bone for bone, 
muscle for muscle, nerve for nerve, after the pattern of the organs of flight in the normal 
birds most nearly allied to them, but, at the same time, to make the wings too small 
for the purpose of flight in these exceptions to the volant and feathered class. 
Moreover, in such hypothetical instances of special creation, the miraculous power 
has been exercised in the limited area of our planet's surface now represented by New 
Zealand, and under conditions which rendered the useless appendages of no detriment 
to the well-being of the created species, until a period when these would, through want 
of wings, be blotted out of creation. 
In illustration of the alternative view of the coming-in of species by the operation of 
a secondary law, I append to the pages devoted to the wingless or flightless birds of 
New Zealand brief accounts of similarly crippled birds from other localities. 
There was a time when a northern sea-bird, larger than those now breeding in the 
‘Summer Isles’ of the north of Scotland, and elsewhere in northern latitudes, flou- 
rished through its powers of obtaining food by diving and swimming, but which had 
lost its power of flight. It nevertheless possessed wings differing in no respect save 
in proportional size from those of the type manifested by the smaller existing Awks 
(Alca torda), which still exercise them in flight, and retain them of the due proportions 
for that act. 
‘The increase of size of Alca impennis may be supposed to have been the condition 
of the discontinuance of the laborious attempts to carry its weight through the air. 
But the wings continuing to be applied, as in the smaller kinds of Awk, to assist in 
swimming, were retained of the size and with the proportions and the stunted closely 
imbricate plumage best adapted to the natatory function. 
Ultimately came the great destroyer on the scene of life; and all recorded evi- 
4B 
