



Chap. XV. Conclusion. 429 



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 repro- 

 duction ; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the con- 

 ditions of life, and from use and disuse : a Eatio of Increase so high 

 as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural 

 Selection, entailing Divergence of Character 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 con- 

 ceiving, 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. 



Glossary. 





