318 DARWINISM STATED BY DARWIN HIMSELF. 



to branch out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the 

 surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as 

 species and groups of species have at all times overmas- 

 tered other species in the great battle for life. The limbs 

 divided into great branches, and these into lesser and 

 lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree was 

 young, budding twigs ; and this connection of the former 

 and present buds by ramifying branches may well repre- 

 sent the classification of all exfciuct and living species in 

 groups subordinate to groups. Of the many twigs which 

 flourished when the tree was a mere bush, only two or 

 three, now grown into great branches, yet survive and 

 bear the other branches ; so with the species which lived 

 during long-past geological periods, very few have left 

 living and modified descendants. From the first growth 

 of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and 

 dropped off; and these fallen branches of various sizes 

 may represent those whole orders, families, and genera 

 which have now no living representatives, and which are 

 known to us only in a fossil state. As we here and there 

 see a thin straggling branch springing from a fork low 

 down in a tree, and which by some chance has been fa- 

 vored and is still alive on its summit, so we occasionally 

 see an animal like the ornithorhynchus or lepidosiren, 

 which in some small degree connects by its affinities two 

 large branches of life, and which has apparently been 

 saved from fatal competition by having inhabited a pro- 

 tected station. As buds give rise by growth to fresh 

 buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on 

 all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe 

 it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with 

 its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and 

 covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful 

 ramifications. 



