{420} "Nature may almost be said to have guarded against the
frequent discovery of her transitional or linking forms," _Origin_,
Ed. i. p. 292. A similar but not identical passage occurs in
_Origin_, Ed. vi. p. 428.

{421} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 291, vi. p. 426.

{422} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 288, vi. p. 422.

{423} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 289, vi. p. 423.

Hence many more remains will be preserved to a distant age, in any
region of the world, during periods of its subsidence{424}, than of its
elevation.

{424} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 300, vi. p. 439.

But during the subsidence of a tract of land, its inhabitants (as before
shown) will from the decrease of space and of the diversity of its
stations, and from the land being fully preoccupied by species fitted to
diversified means of subsistence, be little liable to modification from
selection, although many may, or rather must, become extinct. With
respect to its circum-marine inhabitants, although during a change from
a continent to a _great_ archipelago, the number of stations fitted for
marine beings will be increased, their means of diffusion (an important
check to change of form) will be greatly improved; for a continent
stretching north and south, or a quite open space of ocean, seems to be
to them the only barrier. On the other hand, during the elevation of a
small archipelago and its conversion into a continent, we have, whilst
the number of stations are increasing, both for aquatic and terrestrial
productions, and whilst these stations are not fully preoccupied by
perfectly adapted species, the most favourable conditions for the
selection of new specific forms; but few of them in their early
transitional states will be preserved to a distant epoch. We must wait
during an enormous lapse of time, until long-continued subsidence shall
have taken the place in this quarter of the world of the elevatory
process, for the best conditions of the embedment and the preservation
of its inhabitants. Generally the great mass of the strata in every
country, from having been chiefly accumulated during subsidence, will be
the tomb, not of transitional forms, but of those either becoming
extinct or remaining unmodified.

The state of our knowledge, and the slowness of the changes of level, do
not permit us to test the truth of these remarks, by observing whether
there are more transitional or "fine" (as naturalists would term them)
species, on a