This is a short work presenting Darwin's central idea that living things change over time through natural selection. It explains how variation within a species, the struggle to survive and the greater success of better suited individuals can, over many generations, lead to new forms of life.
The text draws on examples from the natural world and from the breeding of domestic animals and plants. It offers readers a compact introduction to the reasoning behind Darwin's theory, and shows why it changed the way people understand the living world.
Quotes
This principle of preservation, or the survival of the fittest, I have called Natural Selection.