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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: But it may be urged that when several closely-allied species inhabit the
same territory we surely ought to find at the present time many
transitional forms. Let us take a simple case: in travelling from north
to south over a continent, we generally meet at successive intervals with
closely allied or representative species, evidently filling nearly the same
place in the natural economy of the land. These representative species
often meet and interlock; and as the one becomes rarer and rarer, the other
becomes more and more frequent, till the one replaces the other. But if we
compare these species where they intermingle, they are generally as
absolutely distinct from each other in every detail of structure as are
specimens taken from the metropolis inhabited by each. By my theory these
On the Origin of Species |
