Page - 392 - in The Origin of Species

392 ORIGIN OF SPECIES and distinct species; for it is not pretended that we have any sure criterion by which species and varieties can be discriminated. He who rejects this view of the imperfection of the geo- logical record, will rightly reject the whole theory. For he may ask in vain where are the nmnberless transitional links which must formerly have connected the closely allied or representative species, found in the successive stages of the same great formation? He may disbelieve in the immense intervals of time which must have elapsed between our con- secutive formations ; he may overlook how important a part migration has played, when the formations of any one great region, as those of Europe, are considered; he may urge the apparent, but often falsely apparent, sudden coming in of whole groups of species. He may ask where are the remains of those infinitely numerous organisms which must have ex- isted long before the Cambrian system was deposited? We now know that at least one animal did then exist; but I can answer this last question only by supposing that where our oceans now extend they have extended for an enormous period, and where our oscillating continents now stand they have stood since the commencement of the Cambrian system; but that, long before that epoch, the world presented a widely different aspect; and that the older continents, formed of formations older than any known to us, exist now only as remnants in a metamorphosed condition, or lie still buried under the ocean. Passing from these difficulties, the other great leading facts in palaeontology agree admirably with the theory of descent with modification through variation and natural selection. We can thus understand how it is that new spe- cies come in slowly and successively; how species of dif- ferent classes do not necessarily change together, or at the same rate, or in the same degree ; yet in the long run that all undergo modification to some extent. The extinction of old forms is the almost inevitable consequence of the production of new forms. We can understand why, when a species has once disappeared, it never reappears. Groups of species in- crease in numbers slowly, and endure for unequal periods of time; for the process of modification is necessarily slow,