I further believe that these slow, intermittent results accord well with what geology tells us of the rate and manner at which the inhabitants of the world have changed.
Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do much by artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and complexity of the coadaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may have been effected in the long course of time through nature's power of selection, that is by the survival of the fittest.
EXTINCTION CAUSED BY NATURAL SELECTION.
This subject will be more fully discussed in our chapter on Geology; but it must here be alluded to from being intimately connected with natural selection.

Natural selection acts solely through the preservation of variations in some way advantageous, which consequently endure.

Owing to the high geometrical rate of increase of all organic beings, each area is already fully stocked with inhabitants, and it follows from this, that as the favoured forms increase in number, so, generally, will the less favoured decrease and become rare.

Rarity, as geology tells us, is the precursor to extinction.

We can see that any form which is represented by few individuals will run a good chance of utter extinction, during great fluctuations in the nature or the seasons, or from a temporary increase in the number of its enemies.