We can thus understand how it is that new species come in slowly and successively; how species of different classes do not necessarily change together, or at the same rate, or in the same degree; yet in the long run that all undergo modification to some extent.

The extinction of old forms is the almost inevitable consequence of the production of new forms.

We can understand why, when a species has once disappeared, it never reappears.

Groups of species increase in numbers slowly, and endure for unequal periods of time; for the process of modification is necessarily slow, and depends on many complex contingencies.