# Quote — Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

> I look at the natural geological record, as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines. Each word of the slowly-changing language, in which the history is supposed to be written, being more or less different in the interrupted succession of chapters, may represent the apparently abruptly changed forms of life, entombed in our consecutive, but widely separated formations. On this view, the difficulties above discussed are greatly diminished, or even disappear.

- Author: [Charles Darwin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin.md)
- Book: [On the Origin of Species](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species.md)
- Page: 310
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species#IX._On_the_Imperfection_of_the_Geological_Record) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species/i-look-at-the

## More from this book

> I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one.

p. 421 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species/i-see-no-good.md)

> [T]he several classes of facts which have been considered in this chapter, seem to me to proclaim so plainly, that the innumerable species, genera, and families of organic beings, with which this world is peopled, have all descended, each within its own class or group, from common parents, and have all been modified in the course of descent, that I should without hesitation adopt this view, even if it were unsupported by other facts or arguments.

p. 457 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species/t-he-several-classes.md)

> What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern, and should include the same bones, in the same relative positions? ... Hence the same names can be given to the homologous bones in widely different animals. We see the same great law in the construction of the mouths of insects: what can be more different than the immensely long spiral proboscis of a sphinx-moth, the curious folded one of a bee or bug, and the great jaws of a beetle?—yet all these organs, serving for such different purposes, are formed by infinitely numerous modifications of an upper lip, mandibles, and two pairs of maxillæ. Analogous laws govern the construction of the mouths and limbs of crustaceans. So it is with the flowers of plants. Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in members of the same class, by utility or by the doctrine of final causes.

p. 434 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-darwin/on-the-origin-of-species/what-can-be-more.md)