| → believe that the great majority of naturalists are wrong and that the 1861 1869 |
| believe that the great majority of naturalists are wrong and that that the 1866 |
| admit, in opposition to the judgment of most naturalists, that these 1872 |
|
| → a very general 1861 |
| frequent occurrence of 1866 |
| the frequent occurrence of 1869 1872 |
|
| → of time, namely, 1861 1866 1869 1872 |
| namely, 1859 1860 |
|
| → so that here again we have undoubted evidence of change, though not strictly of variation, 1861 1866 |
| but to this subject I shall have to return 1859 1860 |
| so that here again we have undoubted evidence of change 1869 1872 |
|
| → direction required by my theory; but to this latter subject I shall have to return in the following 1861 1866 |
| following 1859 1860 |
| direction required by the theory; but to this latter subject I shall have to return in the following 1869 |
| direction required by the theory; but to this latter subject I shall return in the following 1872 |
|
| → One other consideration is worth notice: 1859 1860 1861 |
| OMIT 1866 1869 1872 |
|
|
excellent naturalists, as Agassiz and Pictet, maintain that all these tertiary species are specifically distinct, though the distinction is admitted to be very slight; so that here, unless we believe that these eminent naturalists have been misled by their
and that these late tertiary species really present no difference whatever from their living representatives, or unless we
→believe that the great majority of naturalists are wrong and that the
tertiary species are all truly distinct from the recent, we have evidence of
→a very general
slight
of
the kind required.
we look to rather wider
→of time, namely,
to distinct but consecutive stages of the same great formation, we find that the embedded fossils, though
universally ranked as specifically different, yet are far more closely
to each other than are the species found in more widely separated formations;
→so that here again we have undoubted evidence of change, though not strictly of variation,
in the
→direction required by my theory; but to this latter subject I shall have to return in the following
chapter. |
|
|
→One other consideration is worth notice:
animals and plants that
propagate rapidly and
not
there is reason to suspect, as we have formerly seen, that their varieties are generally at first local; and that such local varieties do not spread widely and supplant their parent-forms until they have been modified and perfected in some considerable degree. According to this view, the chance of discovering in a formation in any one country all the early stages of transition between any two
is small, for the successive changes are supposed to have been local or confined to some one spot. Most marine animals have a wide range; and we have seen that with plants it is those which have the widest range, that oftenest present
|
