VL] SPECIES AND TIME. 143 



very little must have been indefinitely great, so great 

 indeed as probably far to exceed the number of individuals 

 which have existed of any one variety. If this be true, it 

 would be more probable that no two specimens preserved as 

 fossils should be of one variety than that we should find a 

 great many specimens collected from a very few varieties, 

 provided, of course, the chances of preservation are equal 

 for all individuals." " It is really strange that vast num- 

 bers of perfectly similar specimens should be found, the 

 chances against their perpetuation as fossils are so great ; 

 but it is also very strange that the specimens should 

 be so exactly alike as they are, if, in fact, they came and . 

 vanished by a gradual change." A frl& QMM 



Mr. Darwin attempts 2 to show cause why we should 

 believe a priori that intermediate varieties would exist in 

 lesser numbers than the more extreme forms ; but though 

 they would doubtless do so sometimes, it seems too much 

 to assert that they would do so generally, still less univer- 

 sally. Now little less than universal and very marked 

 inferiority in numbers would account for the absence of 

 certain series of minutely intermediate fossil specimens. 

 The mass of paleontological evidence is indeed overwhelm- 

 ingly against minute and gradual modification. It is true 

 that when once an animal has obtained powers of flight its 

 means of diffusion are indefinitely increased, and we might 

 expect to find many relics of an aerial form and few of its 

 antecedent state with nascent wings just commencing 

 their suspensory power. Yet had such a slow mode of 

 origin, as Darwinians contend for, operated exclusively in 

 all cases, it is absolutely incredible that birds, bats, and 

 pterodactyls, should have left the remains they have, and 

 yet not a single relic be preserved in any one instance of 

 any of these different forms of wing in their incipient and 

 relatively imperfect functional condition ! 



2 "Origin of Species," 5th edit., 1869, p. 212. 



