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Sect 9. Geology

marine inhabitants of the archipelago now range thousands of miles beyond its confines. And analogy would lead us strongly to believe that it would be chiefly these far ranging organisms, species which would oftenest give rise to new varieties, which for a period would remain local, & then would might if having any decided advantage would ultimately spread & supplant their parents. And according to the principles followed by many palæontologists when these varieties when they reached under this new form where they had supplanted their parents ; if presenting ever so small if they presented any permanent difference, however slight, they would be ranked as new species.) If there be any degree of truth in this view,

(If, then, there be some degree of truth in these remarks, we have no right to expect to find in our geological sections an infinite number of those fine transitional forms, which on our theory assuredly have [text excised] connecting & which must have connected all species past & [text excised] long [text excised] branching & diverges & diverging chains of life. All that [text excised]

[in margin:] one form must once have existed.

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[child's drawing of a house, later annotated "FD" for Francis Darwin.]