Most of them
have now been discussed. One, namely, the distinctness of specific forms
and their not being blended together by innumerable transitional links, is
a very obvious difficulty. I assigned reasons why such links do not
commonly occur at the present day under the circumstances apparently most
favourable for their presence, namely, on an extensive and continuous area
with graduated physical conditions. I endeavoured to show, that the life
of each species depends in a more important manner on the presence of other
already defined organic forms, than on climate, and, therefore, that the
really governing conditions of life do not graduate away quite insensibly
like heat or moisture. I endeavoured, also, to show that intermediate
varieties, from existing in lesser numbers than the forms which they
connect, will generally be beaten out and exterminated during the course of
further modification and improvement. The main cause, however, of
innumerable intermediate links not now occurring everywhere throughout
nature depends, on the very process of natural selection, through which new
varieties continually take the places of and supplant their parent-forms.
But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an
enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have
formerly existed, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological
formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology
assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and
this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged
against my theory.
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