47 
Upon these ‘facts I found a conclusion as to how the specific character of wings, 
useless as such, came to be; and this conclusion as to Pezophaps solitaria is the same 
which I have set forth more at length in relation to Didus ineptus', and which I deem 
to be applicable to the still larger terrestrial birds discovered, as in the case of Apy- 
ornis, Dinornis, Aptornis, Notornis, Cnemiornis, in similar geographical and associated 
zoological conditions—these birds, like the Dodo and Solitaire, having become extirpated 
through alterations of the latter conditions, 7. ¢. by introduction of species new to their 
island homes, and with dispositions and powers destructive of such flightless birds. 
Thus is illustrated the origin of species by a condition of the way of work of a secondary 
law suggested by Lamarck. 
Two alternative hypotheses have been propounded. One, by Mr. Darwin, is discussed 
and conjecturally exemplified by the authors of the paper ‘* On the Osteology of the 
Solitaire” (Phil. Trans. 1869, pp. 356-358). The other hypothesis assumes that the 
Iquanodon, Megalosaurus, Scelidosaurus, and other Dinosaurian reptiles walked on the 
hind pair of legs, like birds, and initiated that class by becoming transmuted into the 
warm-blooded, feathered, but wingless species. No suggestion has been made by the 
authors or acceptors of this hypothesis as to the way of operation or conditions of the 









































































transmutation. But 1 have been favoured with a photograph from New York of the 
‘Restorations according to Professors Huxley and Waterhouse Hawkins” of the 
reptilian ancestors of the Moas, now, or to be, placed in the Public Park of that City. 
In most of the instances of wingless birds affinity to more favoured or normal mem- 
bers of the feathered class has been traced. 
The Penguins (Jmpennes) cannot be dissociated from the smaller Urinatores, which 
yetain the volant function of the wings. 
Alca impennis is not generically separable, in judicious taxomony, from the smaller 
swiftly flying Alca torda. | 
The genera Aptornis and Notornis. with keelless breast-bones, cannot be divorced 
from the family of Coots. 
1 «Memoir on the Dodo,’ 4to, 1866, pp. 49-51. 
* 



