i PRO ii ....\n r, 



in tin variation of the downs ig seen in tlio 

 tint with its weeds and gone. Under the con- 

 ditinns, they ha\v come out of the struggle 



:md, by surviving, have proved that 

 tlu-y ar- tin- fitifiaL-to_sur\ 



That tlit stato ct nature, at any time, is a 

 t-in]*>rary phase of a process of incessant change, 

 which has been going on for innumerable ages, 

 appears to me to be a proposition as well estab- 

 lislu'il :us any in modern history. Paleontol> 



in atldition, that the ancient philo- 

 sophers who. with less reason, held the same 

 'i'Htrine, erred in supposing that the phases 

 formed a cycle, exactly repeating the past, exactly 

 foreshadowing the future, in their rotations. On 

 the contrary, it furnishes us with conclusive 

 reasons for thinking that, if every link in the 

 anivsiry of-tfeese humble indigenous plants hail 

 ; i preserved and were accessible to us, the whole 

 would present a converging series of forms of 

 gradually diminishing complexity, until, at some 

 l>. -ritul in ihe history of the earth, far more remote 

 than any of which organic remains have yet been 

 vered, they would merge in those low groups 

 among which the boundaries between animal and 

 illf life become efface* I. 1 



Contemporaneity ami IVrsistcnt Types " (1862), the paleonto- 

 logii.-al proofs of this proposition were, I believe, first set 

 forth. 



1 "On the Border Territory between the Animal and tho 

 Vegetable Kingdoms," .tssays, vol. viii. p. 162. 



