The Dodo exemplifies Buffon’s idea[40] of the origin of species through departure from a more perfect original type by degeneration; and the known consequences of the disuse of one locomotive organ and extra use of another indicate the nature of the secondary causes that may have operated in the creation of this species of bird, agreeably with Lamarck’s philosophical conception of the influence of such physiological conditions of atrophy and hypertrophy[41]. The young of all Doves are hatched with wings as small as in the Dodo: that species retained the immature character. The main condition making possible the production and continuance of such a species in the island of Mauritius was the absence of any animal that could kill a great bird incapable of flight. The introduction of such a destroyer became fatal to the species which had lost such means of escape[42]. The Mauritian Doves (_Columba nitidissima_ and _C. meyeri_) that retained their powers of flight continue to exist there. As I have no reason to offer why one kind of Pigeon should have retained and another lost its powers of flight, nor am able to adduce a particle of evidence of the hypothetical degrees of diminution of the wing-bones to their stunted proportions in _Didus_, any more than in _Dinornis_, I feel that in the foregoing remarks I lay myself open to the rebuke of fellow-labourers who may think with the able authors who last treated of the present subject. They warn their readers to “beware of attributing anything like _imperfection_ to these anomalous organisms, however deficient they may be in those complicated structures which we so much admire in other creatures. Each animal and plant has received its peculiar organization for the purpose, not of exciting the admiration of other beings, but of sustaining its own existence. Its perfection, therefore, consists, not in the number or complication of its organs, but in the adaptation of its whole structure to the external circumstances in which it is destined to live. And, in this point of view, we shall find that every department of the organic creation is equally perfect, the humblest animalcule or the simplest conferva being as completely organized with reference to its appropriate habitat and its destined functions as Man himself, who claims to be lord of all. Such a view of the creation is surely more philosophical than the crude and profane ideas entertained by Buffon and his disciples”[43].