| → But in the intermediate region, having intermediate conditions of life, why do we not now find closely-linking intermediate varieties? 1859 1860 1861 |
| Hence we ougth not to expect at the present time to meet with numerous transitional varieties in each region, though they must have existed there, and may be embedded there in a fossil condition. 1866 |
| Hence we ought not to expect at the present time to meet with numerous transitional varieties in each region, though they must have existed there, and may be embedded there in a fossil condition. 1869 1872 |
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| → This difficulty for a long time quite confounded me. 1859 1860 1861 |
| But in the intermediate region, having intermediate conditions of life, why do we not now find closely-linking intermediate varieties? 1866 1869 1872 |
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| → But I think it can be in large part explained. 1859 1860 1861 |
| This difficulty for a long time quite confounded me. 1866 1869 1872 |
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| ↑ 1 blocks not present in 1859 1860 1861; present in 1866 1869 1872 |
| But I think it can be in large part explained.
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| → almost every continent has 1859 1860 1861 1866 |
| most continents have 1869 1872 |
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| →But in the intermediate region, having intermediate conditions of life, why do we not now find closely-linking intermediate varieties?
→This difficulty for a long time quite confounded me.
→But I think it can be in large part explained.
↑
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| In the first place we should be extremely cautious in inferring, because an area is now continuous, that it has been continuous during a long period. Geology would lead us to believe that
→almost every continent has
been broken up into islands even during the later tertiary periods; and in such islands distinct species might have been separately formed without the possibility of intermediate varieties existing in the intermediate zones. By changes in the form of the land and of climate, marine areas now continuous must often have existed within recent times in a far less continuous and uniform condition than at present. But I will pass over this way of escaping from the difficulty; for I believe that many perfectly defined species have been formed on strictly continuous areas; though I do not doubt that the formerly broken condition of areas now
has played an important part in the formation of new species, more especially with freely-crossing and wandering animals. |
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| In looking at species as they are now distributed over a wide area, we generally find them tolerably numerous over a large territory, then becoming somewhat abruptly rarer and rarer on the confines, and finally disappearing. Hence the neutral territory between two representative species is generally narrow in comparison with the territory proper to each. We see the same fact in ascending mountains, and sometimes
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