This difficulty, as in the case of unconscious selection by man, is avoided on the theory of gradual evolution, through the preservation of a large number of individuals, which varied more or less in any favourable direction, and of the destruction of a large number which varied in an opposite manner.

That many species have been evolved in an extremely gradual manner, there can hardly be a doubt.

The species and even the genera of many large natural families are so closely allied together that it is difficult to distinguish not a few of them.

On every continent, in proceeding from north to south, from lowland to upland, etc.