“Those who believe that the geological record is in any degree perfect, will undoubtedly at once reject my theory. For my part, following out Lyell’s metaphor, I look at the geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept and written in a changing dialect. Of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved, and of each page, only here and there a few lines. Each word of the slowly-changing language, more or less different in the successive chapters, may represent the forms of life, which are entombed in our consecutive formations, and which falsely appear to have been abruptly introduced.”
– Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (Sixth London Edition, with all Additions and Corrections), Chapter X, “On the Imperfection of the Geological Record”
