CONCLUSION 815 



tered likeness to a distant futurity. And of the species 

 now living very few will transmit progeny of any kind 

 to a far distant futurity; for the manner in which all 

 organic beings are grouped shows that the greater num- 

 ber of species in each genus, and all the species in many 

 genera, have left no descendants, but have become ut- 

 terly extinct. We can so far take a proph etic glance 

 i nto fu t urity a s^ to fo retell that it will be the common 

 and widely-spread species, 'bel pngmg to the larger' ^and 

 d ominant groups within each class, which will ultimately 

 prevail and procreate new and dominant species. As all 

 the living forms of "Tile" are the~Trnear3esceSants of 

 those which lived long before the Cambrian epoch, we 

 may feel certain that the ordinary succession by genera- 

 tion has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm 

 has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look 

 with some confidence to a secure future of great length. 

 And ^as natural selection works solely by and for th e 

 good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments 

 will tend to progress toward perfection. 



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 constructed 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; Yariability from the indirect and direct 

 action of the conditions of life, and from us.e and disuse: 

 a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for 



