{ 419} _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 299, vi. p. 437.
{ 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.