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I believe that " many ancient forms of life have been utterly 

 lost." Therefore I must needs allow that they can never be found, 

 and so much the better for me, for then I can desire you to 

 "readily believe that the unknown progenitor of the vertebrata 

 possessed many vertebras." I cannot take upon me to say that he 

 acquired them by Natural Selection, for he must have had them all 

 at once or not at all. I cannot help allowing that the vertebras 

 began with a sort of rudimentary one with a view to the future 

 benefit to the animal, and though this is the very thing which all 

 my theory goes against, it even must be so, but I hold to my 

 theory for all that. Don't tell me ! 



I believe that " every single organised being around us lives 

 by a struggle at some period of its life." " The merest trifle would 

 often give the victory to one organised being over another." " If 

 any one species does not become modified and improved in a 

 corresponding degree with its competitor, it will soon become 

 exterminated." It is true that, as you may see in any wood where 

 the trees if thickly planted together try each to overtop the other 

 for the sake of light and air, no new species are produced, but 

 the survivors remain of the same kind as before ; but I am " of 

 the same opinion still," and though facts are against me, I am 

 against facts. I have nothing to do with them in any such case. 

 They must go to the wall, for me. 



I believe that all living* beings have this struggle against each 

 other, and that the weaker must succumb and be "exter- 

 minated," although I see that all sorts keep their own places as of 

 old, and that the weaker of countless kinds, such as the herring, 

 still exist in innumerable numbers, so to speak. It is a most 

 defenceless creature, and must have been overlooked and neg- 

 lected by Natural Selection, for still it flourishes and abounds 

 beyond all calculation. This .fact you may say is too much for 

 me. Not so, I am too much for it. 



I believe that the forms are so nearly balanced that things 

 remained in statu, quo "for a long period of time," in fact for 

 unknown ages ; so that it would seem as if the result of some 

 omniscience which saw into all futurity beforehand, had arranged 

 for the general good of all, but for all that I hold that Natural 



