Origin of Species Variorum

authorities, to whom, with others, we owe all our knowledge. Those who believe that the geological record is in any degree perfect, ... will undoubtedly at once reject my theory. For my part, following out Lyell's metaphor, I look at the natural geological record, as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines. Each word of the slowly-changing language being more or less different in the .. successive .. chapters, may represent the ... forms of life, entombed in our consecutive but widely separated formations, which falsely appear to have been abruptly transformed. On this view, the difficulties above discussed are greatly diminished, or even disappear.