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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: thirty or forty years from Australia. Something of the same kind must have
occurred on the intertropical mountains: no doubt before the Glacial
period they were stocked with endemic Alpine forms; but these have almost
everywhere largely yielded to the more dominant forms, generated in the
larger areas and more efficient workshops of the north. In many islands
the native productions are nearly equalled or even outnumbered by the
naturalised; and if the natives have not been actually exterminated, their
numbers have been greatly reduced, and this is the first stage towards
extinction. A mountain is an island on the land; and the intertropical
mountains before the Glacial period must have been completely isolated; and
I believe that the productions of these islands on the land yielded to
On the Origin of Species |
