10th Aug, 2022 12:00
A Cabinet of Curiosities: including an Important Natural History Collection
ON NAVAL TIMBER AND ARBORICULTURE BY PATRICK MATTHEW
ON NAVAL TIMBER AND ARBORICULTURE, MATTHEW (P.),
pub. Adam Black, Edinburgh, 1831, original waxed cloth boards
Note: This most important volume by Matthew Patrick is often considered the first work of natural history to clearly anticipate Charles Darwin's theory of Natural Selection, doing so twenty-eight years prior to Darwin. Matthew himself uses the expression "natural process of selection", and was acknowledge by Darwin in the third and subsequent editions of his Origin of Species. "Mr. Patrick Matthew ... gives precisely the same view on the origin of species as that ... propounded by Mr. Wallace and myself." Matthew's anticipation of Darwin is found in the appendix to his little-read book on arboriculture; however, he gives no scientific evidence for his view. Even so, Matthew had cards printed up identifying himself as "the discoverer of natural selection."
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