Nevertheless the truth, as we have or feel it, should be told. In the end it may prove to be the more acceptable service. The _Didus ineptus_, L., through its degenerate or imperfect structure, howsoever acquired, has perished. What have the stigmatizers of Buffon to offer in lieu of his theory as applied to the origin of this species of bird? They begin by asking, “Why does the whale possess the germs of teeth which are never used for mastication? and why was the Dodo endowed with wings at all, when those wings were useless for locomotion? This question,” they own, “is too wide and too deep to plunge into at present.” They nevertheless proceed to remark, “These apparently anomalous facts are really the indications of laws which the Creator has been pleased to follow in the construction of organized beings; they are inscriptions in an unknown hieroglyphic, which we are quite sure mean _something_, but of which we have scarcely begun to master the alphabet. There appear, however, reasonable grounds for believing that the Creator has assigned to each class of animals a definite type or structure, from which He has never departed, even in the most exceptional or eccentric modifications of form. Thus, if we suppose, for instance, that the abstract idea of a Mammal implied the presence of teeth, and the idea of a Bird the presence of wings, we may then comprehend why in the Whale and the Dodo these organs are merely _suppressed_, not wholly _annihilated_”[44]. This notion of type-forms or centres, unfortunately, has not merely relation to abstract biological speculations or theories, but to practical questions on which the true progress of Natural History vitally depends. If such types do exist, the National Museum, it is argued, may be restricted to their exhibition: and so our legislators and the public were assured by the Professor of Natural History in the Government School of Mines[45], when the question was before the “House” four years ago. I have let slip no suitable occasion[46] to combat and expose what has seemed to me to be both an erroneous and mischievous view, most obstructive to the best interests of the science; and, standing alone as I seemed to do on this point in the array of evidence before the “Parliamentary Committee on the British Museum, 1860,” I was glad to find my views on type-forms adopted and paraphrased by the President of the British Association in his Inaugural Address at the Meeting at Nottingham[47], in the present year. DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATES. PLATE I. Ideal Scene in the island of Mauritius before its discovery, in 1598, by the Dutch, founded on:— Fig. 1. Picture of the Dodo, by Roelandt Savery, 1626, in the Royal Gallery of Berlin. Fig. 2. Fac-simile of R. Savery’s Picture of the Dodo, in the possession of the late Wm. J. Broderip, Esq., F.R.S. (no date).