Wild Speculation

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a [...]

1: Where a characteristic can persist, it will persist; characteristics which are incapable of persistence are eliminated. Persistent characteristics are favoured.
2: Persistent characteristics operating closer to an optimum efficiency in terms of energy expended to energy absorbed gain cumulative advantage over similar characteristics operating at lower levels of efficiency. Efficiency in persistent characteristics is [...]