Excerpt from The Universal Anthology, Vol. 7: A Collection of the Best Literature, Ancient, Medieval and Modern, With Biographical and Explanatory Notes The Origin of Species also owed much to the form of its presentation. Purporting to be only an abstract of the voluminous records which the author had spent twenty years in collecting, it necessarily bristled with technical facts, and hence could not be expected to make easy reading. Professor Huxley used to say that he never took it up afresh without finding something new that he had overlooked in previous readings; and if Darwin's greatest disciple could make such a statement, it is hardly to be hoped that anyone else has ever fully mastered all the mere facts of the Origin. Yet these facts are arranged and presented in such fashion as to carry the reader forward, if not easily, at least clearly and unequivocally, to the conclusions at which the author aimed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.