Origin of Species Variorum

determine, as has been remarked by Owen, quicker extermination from the greater amount of requisite food. Before man inhabited India or Africa, some cause must have checked the continued increase of the existing elephant. A highly capable judge, Dr. Falconer, believes that it is chiefly insects which, from incessantly harassing and weakening the elephant in India, check its increase; and this was Bruces conclusion with respect to the African elephant in Abyssinia. It is certain that insects ... and blood-sucking bats determine the existence of the larger naturalised quadrupeds in several parts of S. America. We see in many cases in the more recent tertiary formations, that rarity precedes extinction; and we know that this has been the progress of events with those animals which have been exterminated, either locally or wholly, through mans agency. I may repeat what I published in 1845, namely, that to admit that species generally become rare before they become extinct— to feel no surprise at the rarity of a species, and yet to marvel greatly when the species ceases to exist, is much the same as to admit that sickness in the individual is the forerunner of death— to feel no surprise at sickness, but, when the sick man dies, to wonder and to suspect that he died by some .. deed of violence.

The theory of natural selection is grounded on the belief that each new variety, and ultimately each new species, is produced and maintained by having some advantage over those with which it comes into competition; and the consequent extinction of the less-favoured forms almost inevitably follows. It is the same with our domestic productions; when a new and slightly improved variety has been raised, it at first supplants the less improved varieties in the same neighbourhood;