The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

RECORD: Darwin, C. R. n.d. The History of the world, as inferred by variation of species is not a volume divided into chapters but a vast continuous page with here & there a page & often many pages together torn out. CUL-DAR205.9.78. Edited by John van Wyhe (Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/)

REVISION HISTORY: Transcribed by Christine Chua and edited by John van Wyhe 10.2021. RN1

NOTE: The brown crayon number '22' indicates that this document was filed by Darwin in his portfolio for the subject of Palaeontology: extinction.

Reproduced with permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library and William Huxley Darwin. The volume CUL-DAR205.9 contains notes on palaeontology and geology [regarding theory of evolution].

[78]

The History of the world, as inferred by variation of species is not a volume divided into chapters but a vast continuous page with here & there a page & often many pages together torn out (this is too like Lyells similes)

How important is my theory to geology - how important it makes the gap - it probably throws back the worlds antiquity as much beyond the Cambrian, as the Cambrian is older than the Post-Tertiary - There is then, no such thing as Primary formation

[over]

[78v]

all are metamorphic. Hutton was right we see no trace of a beginning (yet we by this theory know there must have been a beginning)

This conclusion of there being no Primary must be viewed as an objection to my conclusion - in same manner as the want of sequence.

Citation: John van Wyhe, ed. 2002-. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. (http://darwin-online.org.uk/)