CHAP. XV.] RECAPITULATION. 383 



improved at a quicker rate than the intermediate varieties, which 

 existed in lesser numbers ; so that the intermediate varieties would, 

 in the long run, be supplanted and exterminated. 



On this doctrine of the extermination of an infinitude of con- 

 necting links, between the living and extinct inhabitants of the 

 world, and at each successive period between the extinct and still 

 older species, why is not every geological formation charged with 

 such links ? Why does not every collection of fossil remains afford 

 plain evidence of the gradation and mutation of the forms of life ? 

 Although geological research has undoubtedly revealed the former 

 existence of many links, bringing numerous forms of life much 

 closer together, it does not yield the infinitely many fine gradations 

 between past and present species required on the theory ; and this 

 is the most obvious of the many objections which may be urged 

 against it. Why, again, do whole groups of allied species appear, 

 though this appearance is often false, to have come in suddenly on 

 the successive geological stages? Although we now know that 

 organic beings appeared on this globe, at a period incalculably 

 remote, long before the lowest bed of the Cambrian system was 

 deposited, why do we not find beneath this system great piles of 

 strata stored with the remains of the progenitors of the Cambrian 

 fossils ? For on the theory, such strata must somewhere have been 

 deposited at these ancient and utterly unknown epochs of the 

 world's history. 



I can answer these questions and objections only on the suppo- 

 sition that the geological record is far more imperfect than most 

 geologists believe. The number of specimens in all our museums 

 is absolutely as nothing compared with the countless generations 

 of countless species which have certainly existed. The parent- 

 form of any two or more species would not be in all its characters 

 directly intermediate between its modified offspring, any more 

 than the rock-pigeon is directly intermediate in crop and tail 

 between its descendants, the pouter and fantail pigeons. We 

 should not be able to recognise a species as the parent of another 

 and modified species, if we were to examine the two ever so 

 closely, unless we possessed most of the intermediate links ; and 

 owing to the imperfection of the geological record, we have no 

 just right to expect to find so many links. If two or three, or 

 even more linking forms were discovered, they would simply 

 be ranked by many naturalists as so many new species, more 

 especially if found in different geological sub-stages, let their 

 differences be ever so slight. Numerous existing doubtful forms 

 could be named which are probably varieties ; but who will pre- 

 tend that in future ages so many fossil links will be discovered, 

 that naturalists will be able to decide whether or not these doubt- 

 ful forms ought to be called varieties 1 Only a small portion oi 



