But it must often have happened that a new
species belonging to some one group has seized on the place occupied by a
species belonging to a distinct group, and thus have caused its
extermination. If many allied forms be developed from the successful
intruder, many will have to yield their places; and it will generally be
the allied forms, which will suffer from some inherited inferiority in
common. But whether it be species belonging to the same or to a distinct
class, which have yielded their places to other modified and improved
species, a few of the sufferers may often be preserved for a long time,
from being fitted to some peculiar line of life, or from inhabiting some
distant and isolated station, where they will have escaped severe
competition. For instance, some species of Trigonia, a great genus of
shells in the secondary formations, survive in the Australian seas; and a
few members of the great and almost extinct group of Ganoid fishes still
inhabit our fresh waters. Therefore, the utter extinction of a group is
generally, as we have seen, a slower process than its production.
With respect to the apparently sudden extermination of whole families or
orders, as of Trilobites at the close of the palaeozoic period, and of
Ammonites at the close of the secondary period, we must remember what has
been already said on the probable wide intervals of time between our
consecutive formations; and in these intervals there may have been much
slow extermination.
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