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on the earth, 1859 1860 1861 1866
OMIT 1869 1872

course of further modification and improvement. The main cause, however, of innumerable intermediate links not now occurring everywhere throughout
nature,
nature
de-
....
pends
depends
on the very process of natural selection, through which new varieties continually take the places of and
supplant
exterminate
their parent-forms. But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly
existed,
existed
on the earth, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such
finely graduated
finely-graduated
organic chain; and
this,
this
perhaps, is the most obvious and
gravest
serious
objection which can be urged against
the
my
theory
theory.
The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.
In the first
place
place,
it should always be borne in mind what sort of intermediate forms must, on
the
my
theory, have formerly existed. I have found it difficult, when looking at any two species, to avoid picturing to
myself
myself,
forms
directly
directly
intermediate between them. But this is a wholly false view; we should always look for forms intermediate between each species and a common but unknown progenitor; and the progenitor will generally have differed in some respects from all its modified descendants. To give a simple illustration: the fantail and pouter pigeons
are
have
both descended from the rock-pigeon; if we possessed all the intermediate varieties which have ever existed, we should have an extremely close series between both and the rock-pigeon; but we should have no varieties directly intermediate between the fantail and pouter; none, for instance, combining a tail somewhat expanded with a crop somewhat enlarged, the characteristic features of these two breeds. These