"Apteryx" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tail-feathers of the cock sometimes reach a length of ten or even fifteen feet. This is not precisely typical of the gallinaceous species; but it is none the less a phenomenon which might be mentioned in a comparison with the apteryx. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Mantell came upon an immense egg-shell, for which he said that his hat would hardly have been large enough to serve as cup. But the size of a bird does not always indicate what that of the egg is, so this may not have been one laid by a dinornis. Thus, the Apteryx, or Kiwi, of New Zealand, a curious, almost wingless bird, lays an egg which is about a quarter of its ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... characteristics—their great abundance, their slow flight, their gaudy colours, and the entire absence of protective tints on their under surfaces. This property places them somewhat in the position of those curious wingless birds of oceanic islands, the dodo, the apteryx, and the moas, which are with great reason supposed to have lost the power of flight on account of the absence of carnivorous quadrupeds. Our butterflies have been protected in a different way, but quite as effectually; ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Organs and what you call germs of organs, and what I call in my bigger book "nascent" organs. An organ should not be called rudimentary unless it be useless—as teeth which never cut through the gums—the papillae, representing the pistil in male flowers, wing of Apteryx, or better, the little wings under soldered elytra. These organs are now plainly useless, and a fortiori, they would be useless in a less developed state. Natural Selection acts exclusively by preserving successive slight, USEFUL modifications. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... (page li) of "the axiom of the continuous operation of creative power, or of the ordained becoming of living things." Further on (page xc), after referring to geographical distribution, he adds, "These phenomena shake our confidence in the conclusion that the Apteryx of New Zealand and the Red Grouse of England were distinct creations in and for those islands respectively. Always, also, it may be well to bear in mind that by the word 'creation' the zoologist ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... Egypt; bush pigs from Africa; peccaries from South America; and two painted pigs from West Africa; all "de grege porci," and in excellent health: to say nothing of two hippopotamuses; four "seraphic" giraffes; antelopes (we did not number them); brush turkeys from Australia; an apteryx from New Zealand; the curious white sheathbills from the South Seas; the refulgent metallic green and purple-tinted monaul, or Impeyan pheasant, strutting with outspread, light-coloured tail, just as he courts his plain hen-mate on the ...
— Heads and Tales • Various |
