Flexi Says: Darwin lived in an increasingly scientific society which had begun to accept the idea that universal "laws" governed processes in nature, perhaps including life itself. Like Lamarck, Darwin understood that species change. Like Lyell, he saw that the history of Earth and its life covered a vast amount of time. From his observations of animal breeding, he recognized that, even within species, individuals showed variation in traits and that the variations could be passed to offspring. Recalling Malthus, he knew that populations could produce far more offspring than the environment could support. He predicted that individuals with traits which suited the environment would survive and reproduce to pass their favorable traits to offspring
