Origin of Species Variorum

chain of linking forms does not, however, in these cases, or in any case, run straight from the one living form to the other, but takes a circuitous sweep through the forms which lived during long-past ages. What geological research has not revealed, is the former existence of infinitely numerous gradations, as fine as existing varieties, connecting nearly all our existing species with extinct species. But this ought not to be expected; yet this has been repeatedly advanced as a most serious objection against my views. ↑

It may be worth while to sum up the foregoing remarks on the causes of the imperfection of the geological record under an imaginary illustration. The Malay Archipelago is .. about the size of Europe from the North Cape to the Mediterranean, and from Britain to Russia; and therefore equals all the geological formations which have been examined with any accuracy, excepting those of the United States of America. I fully agree with Mr. Godwin-Austen, that the present condition of the Malay Archipelago, with its numerous large islands separated by wide and shallow seas, probably represents the former state of Europe, whilst most of our formations were accumulating. The Malay Archipelago is one of the richest regions of the whole world in organic beings; yet if all the species were to be collected which have ever lived there, how imperfectly would they represent the natural history of the world!

But we have every reason to believe that the terrestrial productions of the archipelago would be preserved in an extremely imperfect manner in the formations which we suppose to be there accumulating. Not many of the strictly littoral animals, or of those which lived on naked submarine rocks, would be embedded; and those embedded in gravel or sand would not endure to a distant epoch. Wherever sediment did not accu- mulate