Chap. XV.] CONCLUSION. 305 



prophetic glance into futurity as to foretell that it will 

 be the common and widely-spread species, belonging to 

 the larger and dominant groups within each class, which 

 will ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant 

 species. As all the living forms of life are the lineal 

 descendants of those which lived long before the Cam- 

 brian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary 

 succession by generation 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 the good of each being, all corporeal and 

 mental endowments will tend to progress towards 

 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 Eeproduction ; In- 

 heritance which is almost implied by reproduction; 

 Variability from the indirect and direct action of the 

 conditions 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, 



