... not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity.

Till facts are grouped & called there can be no prediction. The only advantage of discovering laws is to foretell what will happen & to see bearing of scattered facts.

But Geology carries the day: it is like the pleasure of gambling, speculating, on first arriving, what the rocks may be; I often mentally cry out 3 to 1 Tertiary against primitive; but the latter have hitherto won all the bets.

Even the humblest mammal's strong sexual, parental, and social instincts give rise to 'do unto others as yourself' and 'love thy neighbor as thyself'.

I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men

I am actually weary of telling people that I do not pretend to adduce [direct] evidence of one species changing into another, but I believe that this view is in the main correct, because so many phenomena can thus be grouped end explained.

Hence, a traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment.