1It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many
2plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various
3insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth,
4and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different
5from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner,
6have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in
7the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is
8almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and
9direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and
10disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life,
11and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of
12Character and the Extinction of lessimproved forms. Thus, from the war
13of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are
14capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals,
15directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its
16several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or
17into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to
18the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most
19beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
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