|
of any decided advantage, or when further modified and improved, they would slowly spread and supplant their parent-forms. When such varieties returned to their ancient homes, as they would differ from their former
in a nearly uniform, though perhaps extremely slight degree,
→they
would, according to the principles followed by many palæontologists, be ranked as new and distinct species. |
| If
there be some degree of truth in these remarks, we have no right to expect to
in our geological formations, an infinite number of those fine transitional
on
have connected all the past and present species of the same group into one long and branching chain of life. We ought only to look for a few links,
→some more closely,
some more
→related
to each other; and these links, let them be ever so close, if found in different stages of the same formation, would, by
be ranked as distinct species. But I do not pretend that I should ever have suspected how poor
→a record of the mutations of life,
the best
geological
had not the
of
→our not discovering
innumerable transitional links between the species which
at the commencement and close of each formation, pressed so hardly on my theory. |
| The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several
for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and
→by none more forcibly than by Professor Sedgwick—
as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really
|
