If numerous species, belonging to
the same genera or families, have really started into life at once, the
fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural selection.
For the development by this means of a group of forms, all of which are
descended from some one progenitor, must have been an extremely slow
process; and the progenitors must have lived long before their modified
descendants. But we continually overrate the perfection of the geological
record, and falsely infer, because certain genera or families have not been
found beneath a certain stage, that they did not exist before that stage.
In all cases positive palaeontological evidence may be implicitly trusted;
negative evidence is worthless, as experience has so often shown. We
continually forget how large the world is, compared with the area over
which our geological formations have been carefully examined; we forget
that groups of species may elsewhere have long existed, and have slowly
multiplied, before they invaded the ancient archipelagoes of Europe and the
United States. We do not make due allowance for the enormous intervals of
time which have elapsed between our consecutive formations, longer perhaps
in many cases than the time required for the accumulation of each
formation. These intervals will have given time for the multiplication of
species from some one parent-form: and in the succeeding formation, such
groups or species will appear as if suddenly created.
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