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In the same manner as gallinaceous and struthious birds swallow stones to aid in the trituration of their food, so it appears to be with terricolous worms.
Finally, if it was something different from either, how did the carinate birds and pterodactyles take on independently one special common structure when disagreeing in so many; while the struthious birds, agreeing in many points with the Dinosauria, agree yet more with the carinate birds? Indeed by no arrangement of branches from a stem can the difficulty be evaded.
Thus a difficulty presents itself as to the explanation of the three following relationships: That of the Pterodactyles with carinate birds; that of the Dinosauria with struthious birds; that of the carinate and struthious birds with each other.
Gallinaceous and struthious birds retain the same stones in their gizzards for a long time, which thus become well rounded; but this does not appear to be the case with worms, judging from the large number of the fragments of tiles, glass beads, stones, &c., commonly found in their castings and intestines.
In the fossils of the Post-pliocene period in this same island, there is the like absence of kangaroos, opossums, wombats, and the rest; but in their place a prodigious number of well-preserved specimens of gigantic birds of the struthious order, called by Owen Dinornis and Palapteryx, which are entombed in superficial deposits.
Higher and Lower-level Valley-gravels. Loess or Inundation-mud of the Nile, Rhine, etc. Origin of Caverns. Remains of Man and extinct Quadrupeds in Cavern Deposits. Cave of Kirkdale. Australian Cave-breccias. Geographical Relationship of the Provinces of living Vertebrata and those of extinct Post-pliocene Species. Extinct struthious Birds of New Zealand. Climate of the Post-pliocene Period.
If it was that of the carinate birds, how did the struthious birds and Dinosauria independently agree to differ?
One form is exemplified by the ostrich, rhea, emeu, cassowary, apteryx, dinornis, &c. These are the struthious birds. Now birds and reptiles have such and so many points in common, that Darwinians must regard the former as modified descendants of ancient reptilian forms.
There are indeed many reasons for thinking that a southern continent, rich in living forms, once existed. One such reason is the way in which struthious birds are, or have been, distributed around the antarctic region: as the ostrich in Africa, the rhea in South America, the emeu in Australia, the apteryx, dinornis, &c. in New Zealand, the epiornis in Madagascar.
Nevertheless, the view has been put forward and ably maintained by the same Professor, as also by Professor Cope in the United States, that the line of descent from reptiles to birds has not been from ordinary reptiles, through pterodactyle-like forms, to ordinary birds, but to the struthious ones from certain extinct reptiles termed Dinosauria; one of the most familiarly known of which is the Iguanodon of the Wealden formation.
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