Reflecting thus, we cease to pity the ostrich; we begin to see that nature has been supremely wise, our classifications only having led us into error. A new thought dawns upon our apprehension; instead of longer regarding the ostrich as furnishing an example of nature's bird-creative power gone astray, we come to look upon this creature as designed upon the type of ordinary walking animals, and having some bird characteristics added. Assuredly this point of view is better than the other; for whereas the first reveals nature to us through the distorting medium of an abstraction, the other shows us nature herself. It is not a matter of complete certainty that the bird-type, as naturalists explain and define it in their systems, exists; but there can be no doubt as to the existence of the ostrich. In this mode of expression there is nothing paradoxical; and doubtless, when we come to reflect upon it, the case will not fail to seem a little strange that we are so commonly in the habit of testing the inequalities of beings by reference to systems, instead of following the opposite course, viz., that of testing the value and completeness of systems by reference to the qualities of individuals they embrace. Naturalists invent a system and make it their touchstone of truth; whereas the real touchstone would be the creature systematized. The ostrich simply goes to prove that the zoological types imagined by naturalists are endowed with less of the absolute than philosophers in their pride of science had imagined. Animal types are not the strangers to each other that artificial classifications would make them appear.
Nor is flexibility of bird-type only manifested by the examples wherein a bird acquires characteristics of quadrupeds and other walking animals. Wings may even become metamorphosed into a sort of fins, thus establishing a connection between bird-life and fish-life. This occurs in the manchot, a bird not less aquatic in its habits than the seal—of flying and walking almost equally incapable—a bird the natural locomotive condition of which is to be plunged [{533}] in water up to the neck. Assuredly nothing can be more absurd than the attempt to recognize, in these ambiguous organizations, so many attempts of nature to pass from one type to another.
No matter what religious system one may have adopted, or what philosophical code: the interpretation of nature (according to which she is represented as making essays—trying experiments) is alike inadmissible. Neither God omniscient, nor nature infallible, can be assumed by the philosopher as trying experiments. There are, indeed, no essays in nature but degrees—transitions. Wherefore these transitions? is a question that brings philosophy to bay, and demonstrates her weakness. It is a question that cannot be pondered too deeply. Therein lies the germ of some great mystery.
Reverting to bird-giants, past and present, it is assuredly incorrect to assume, as certain naturalists have assumed, that flying would have been incompatible with their bulk. There exist birds of prey, of whose bodies the specific gravity does not differ much from that of the ostrich, and are powerful in flight nevertheless. Then another class of facts rises up in opposition to the hypothesis, that mere grandeur of dimensions is the limit to winged flying. Neither the apteryx nor the manchot fly any more than the ostrich. Neither is a large bird, nor, relatively to size, a heavy bird. As regards the epiornis, the position is not universally acceded to by naturalists that the creature was like the ostrich, the apteryx, and cassowary, a mere walking bird. An Italian naturalist, Signor Bianconi, has noted a certain peculiarity in the metatarsal bones of the creature which induces him to refer it to the category of winged birds of prey. If this hypothesis be tenable, then a sort of giant vulture the epiornis would have been: one in whose imposing presence the condor of the Andes would have dwindled to the dimensions of a buzzard. Further, if Signor Bianconi's assumption hold good, then may we not have done amiss in banishing the "roc" to the realms of fiction? Old Marco Polo, writing in the thirteenth century, described the roc circumstantially, and the account has been long considered as either a fiction or a mistake. Signor Bianconi, coming to the rescue of his fellow-countryman, thinks that the Italian traveller may have actually described a giant bird of prey extant at the time when he wrote, but which has now become extinct.
A notice of extinct birds would be incomplete without reference to the dodo, the very existence of which had been lately questioned; so completely has it fleeted away from the earth. Messrs. Broderip, Strickland, and Melville, however, have amply vindicated the dodo's claim to be regarded a former denizen of the world we live in. The dodo was first seen by the Dutch when they landed on the Isle of France, at that time uninhabited, immediately subsequent to the doubling of Cape Horn by the Portuguese. These birds were described as having no wings, but in the place of them three or four black feathers. Where the tail should be, there grew instead four or five curling plumes of a grayish color. In their stomachs they were said to have commonly a stone as big as a fist, and hard as the gray Bentemer stone. The boat's crew of the Jacob Van Neck called them Walgh-vogels (surfeit birds), because they could not cook them or make them tender, or because they were able to get so many turtle-doves, which had a much more pleasant flavor, so that they took a disgust to these birds. Likewise, it is said that three or four of these birds were enough to afford a whole ship's company one full meal. Indeed, the sailors salted down some of them, and carried them on the voyage.
Many descriptions of the dodo were given by naturalists after the commencement of the seventeenth century; and the British Museum contains a painting said to have been copied [{534}] from a living individual. Underneath the painting is a leg still finely preserved; and in respect of this leg naturalists are agreed that it cannot belong to any existing species. The dodo must have been a curious bird, if Mr. Strickland's notion of him be correct; and Professor Reinhardt, of Copenhagen, holds a similar opinion. The dodo, these naturalists affirm, was a vulture-like dove—a sort of ugly giant pigeon—but with beak and claws like a vulture. He had companions or neighbors, at least, not dissimilar in nature. Thus a bird called the solitaire inhabited the small island of Roderigues, three hundred miles east of the Mauritius. Man has exterminated the solitaire, as well as other birds nearly allied, formerly denizens of the Isle of Bourbon.
The dodo will be seen no more; the race has fleeted away. Among birds, the emeu, the cassowary, and the apteryx are species rapidly vanishing; amongst quadrupeds, the kangaroo—the platypus: others slowly, but not less surely. After a while they will be gone from the earth wholly, as bears, wolves, mammoths, and hyenas have gone from our own island. The Bos primigenius, or great wild bull, was common in Germany when Julius Caesar flourished. The race has become wholly extinct, if, indeed, not incorporated with the breed of large tame oxen of northern Europe. The urus would have become extinct but for the care taken by Russian emperors to preserve a remnant in Lithuanian forests. The beaver built his mud huts along the Saone and Rhone up to the last few generations of man; and when Hannibal passed through Gaul on his way to Italy, beavers in Gaul were common. Thus have animals migrated or died out, passed away, but the balance of life has been preserved. Man has gone on conquering: now exterminating, now subjecting. Save the fishes of the sea and the birds of the air, the time will perhaps come when creatures will have to choose between subjection and death. Ostriches would seem to be reserved for the first alternative, seeing that in South Africa, in southern France, and Italy, these birds have lately been bred, domiciled into tame fowls, in behalf of their feathers. Very profitable would ostrich farming seem to be. These giant birds want no food but grass, and the yearly feather yield of each adult ostrich realizes about twenty-five pounds sterling.