Of Mr. Patrick Matthew, who buried his treasure in an appendix to a
work on _Naval Timber and Arboriculture_, Darwin said that "he clearly
saw the full force of the principle of natural selection." In 1860
Darwin wrote--very characteristically--about this to Lyell: "Mr.
Patrick Matthew publishes a long extract from his work on _Naval
Timber and Arboriculture_, published in 1831, in which he briefly but
completely anticipates the theory of Natural Selection. I have ordered
the book, as some passages are rather obscure, but it is certainly, I
think, a complete but not developed anticipation. Erasmus always said
that surely this would be shown to be the case some day. Anyhow, one
may be excused in not having discovered the fact in a work on Naval
Timber."[30]
De Quatrefages and De Varigny have maintained that the botanist Naudin
stated the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1852. He
explains very clearly the process of artificial selection, and says
that in the garden we are following Nature's method. "We do not think
that Nature has made her species in a different fashion from that in
which we proceed ourselves in order to make our variations." But, as
Darwin said, "he does not show how selection acts under nature."
Similarly it must be noted in regard to several pre-Darwinian pictures
of the struggle for existence (such as Herder's, who wrote in 1790
"All is in struggle ... each one for himself" and so on), that a
recognition of this is only the first step in Darwinism.
Profs. E. Perrier and H. F. Osborn have called attention to a
remarkable anticipation of the selection-idea which is to be found in
the speculations of Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1825-1828) on the
evolution of modern Crocodilians from the ancient Teleosaurs. Changing
environment induced changes in the respiratory system and far-reaching
consequences followed. The atmosphere, acting upon the pulmonary
cells, brings about "modifications which are favourable or destructive
('funestes'); these are inherited, and they influence all the rest of
the organisation of the animal because if these modifications lead to
injurious effects the animals which exhibit them perish and are
replaced by others of a somewhat different form, a form changed so as
to be adapted to (à la convenance) the new environment."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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