| → from being found 1866 1869 |
| from having been found 1859 1860 1861 |
| OMIT 1872 |
|
|
in the great battle for life. The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree was
budding twigs; and this
of the former and present buds by ramifying branches may well represent the classification of all extinct and living species in groups subordinate to groups. Of the many twigs which flourished when the tree was a mere bush, only two or three, now grown into great branches, yet survive and bear
the other branches; so with the species which lived during long-past geological periods, very few
have
and modified descendants. From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off; and these
branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no living representatives, and which are known to us only
→from being found
in a fossil state. As we here and there see a thin straggling branch springing from a fork low down in a tree, and which by some chance has been favoured and is still alive on its summit, so we occasionally see an animal like the Ornithorhynchus or Lepidosiren, which in some small degree connects by its affinities two large branches of life, and which has apparently been saved from fatal competition by having inhabited a protected station. As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its
and beautiful
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