It is the dominant and widely ranging species which vary most frequently and vary most, and varieties are often at first local--both causes rendering the discovery of intermediate links in any one formation less likely.

Local varieties will not spread into other and distant regions until they are considerably modified and improved; and when they have spread, and are discovered in a geological formation, they appear as if suddenly created there, and will be simply classed as new species.

Most formations have been intermittent in their accumulation; and their duration has probably been shorter than the average duration of specific forms.

Successive formations are in most cases separated from each other by blank intervals of time of great length, for fossiliferous formations thick enough to resist future degradation can, as a general rule, be accumulated only where much sediment is deposited on the subsiding bed of the sea.

During the alternate periods of elevation and of stationary level the record will generally be blank.