Chap. X. 
SUMMAKY. 
345 
come widely divergent. Extinct forms are seldom 
directly intermediate between existing forms; but are 
intermediate only by a long and circuitous course 
through many extinct and very different forms. We 
can clearly see why the organic remains of closely con¬ 
secutive formations are more closely allied to each 
other, than are those of remote formations ; for the 
forms are more closely linked together by generation: 
we can clearly see why the remains of an intermediate 
formation are intermediate in character. 
The inhabitants of each successive period in the 
world’s history have beaten their predecessors in the 
race for life, and are, in so far, higher in the scale of 
nature; and this may account for that vague yet ill- 
defined sentiment, felt by many palaeontologists, that 
organisation on the whole has progressed. If it should 
hereafter be proved that ancient animals resemble to a 
certain extent the embryos of more recent animals of the 
same class, the fact will be intelligible. The succession 
of the same types of structure within the same areas 
during the later geological periods ceases to be myste¬ 
rious, and is simply explained by inheritance. 
If then the geological record be as imperfect as I 
believe it to be, and it may at least be asserted that 
the record cannot be proved to be much more perfect, 
the main objections to the theory of natural selection 
are greatly diminished or disappear. On the other 
hand, all the chief laws of palaeontology plainly pro¬ 
claim, as it seems to me, that species have been pro-, 
duced by ordinary generation: old forms having been 
supplanted by new and improved forms of life, produced 
by the laws of variation still acting round us, and pre¬ 
served by Natural Selection. 
