CHAP. XV.] CONCLUSION. 403 



It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with 

 many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, 

 with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling 

 through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately con- 

 structed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon 

 each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by 

 laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, 

 being Growth with Reproduction ; Inheritance which is almost 

 implied by reproduction ; Variability from the indirect and direct 

 action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse : a Ratio 

 of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a 

 consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Cha- 

 racter and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the 

 war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object 

 which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the 

 higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view 

 of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed 

 by the Creator into a few forms or into one ; and that, whilst this 

 planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, 

 from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most 

 wonderful have been, and are being evolved. 



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