SUPPLEMENT II. 

MEMOIR 
ON THE 
EXTINCT WINGLESS GROUND-DOVE, OR DODO, 
WITH A 
COMPARISON OF THE SKELETONS OF 
DIDUS INEPTUS AND D. (PEZOPHAPS) SOLITARIUS. 
A REMARKABLE and interesting relation of the birds with wings undeveloped as 
instruments of flight! is that of the restriction of particular genera and species to 
definite, and sometimes limited, geographical areas. 
The Ostrich has the great continent of Africa for its range; but the genus Struthio 
is unrepresented in other quarters of the globe. Rhea, or the three-toed Ostrich, is, in 
like manner, limited to S. America. Dromaius is Australian; but the tract of land 
over which the Emus range is large enough to have led to its being regarded as a 
“Fifth Continent.” The Casuaries are distributed about the remnants of the old 
Melanesian continent, of which the northern border of Australia and the contiguous 
island of New Guinea are the chief; specific modifications of the type-bird, such as that 
represented by Caswarius bennettii of New Britain, being found in smaller neighbouring 
outlying parts. 
The subjects of the preceding Monographs have added frequent illustrations of the 
law of Geographical Distribution in the restriction of so many and so large species of 
an extinct genus, Dinornis, to the islands of New Zealand. The living species of 
Apteryx of the same islands there solely represent the extinct giants, as the almost 
extinct Notornis of the South Island may be said to represent the larger extinct New- 
Zealand Rallines, Aptornis and Cnemiornis. 
An anticipation hazarded in the first “ Memoir on Dinornis” (p. 105), viz. that other 
evidences of bulky birds unable to fly or swim await the researches of the naturalist’, 
has been remarkably fulfilled. 
Madagascar has revealed most interesting evidences of a gigantic tridactyle wingless 
genus, Apyornis; but the equally peculiar form of ground-bird limited to the smaller 
1 Tt is in this sense that birds are termed “ wingless” in the present work. 
2 Transactions of the Zoological Society, vol. iii, p. 267 (1843). 

tata erlang amma aa wre 
i 

