To give an imaginary instance: the jay has become modified in the three countries into (I believe) three or four species; but the jay genus is not, apparently, so dominant a group as the crows; and in the long run probably all the jays will be exterminated and be replaced perhaps by some modified crows.
I merely give this illustration to show what seems to me probable.
But oh! what work there is before we shall understand the genealogy of organic beings! With respect to the Apteryx, I know not enough of anatomy; but ask Dr.
F.whether the clavicle, etc., do not give attachment to some of the muscles of respiration.

If my views are at all correct, the wing of the Apteryx (113/3.

"Origin of Species," Edition VI., page 140.) cannot be (page 452 of the "Origin") a nascent organ, as these wings are useless.
I dare not trust to memory, but I know I found the whole sternum always reduced in size in all the fancy and confined pigeons relatively to the same bones in the wild Rock-pigeon: the keel was generally still further reduced relatively to the reduced length of the sternum; but in some breeds it was in a most anomalous manner more prominent.

I have got a lot of facts on the reduction of the organs of flight in the pigeon, which took me weeks to work out, and which Huxley thought curious.
I am utterly ashamed, and groan over my handwriting.

It was "Natural Preservation." Natural persecution is what the author ought to suffer.
It rejoices me that you do not object to the term.