Darwinism in forestry / Raphael Zon.

  • Zon, Raphael, 1874-1956.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Darwinism in forestry / Raphael Zon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    1/6 (page 541)
    The statement to which Darwin referred in his letter to Hooker appeared in the Gardeners’ Chronicle on April 21, I860 (page 362), and is this: I have been much interested by Mr. Patrick Matthew’s communica- tion in the number of your paper dated April 7th. I freely acknowl- edge that Mr. Matthew has anticipated by many years the explanation which I have offered of the origin of species, tinder the name of natural selection. I think that no one will feel surprised that neither I, nor apparently any other naturalist, had heard of Mr. Matthew’s views, considering how briefly they are given, and that they appeared in the appendix to a work on Naval Timber and Arboriculture. I can do no more than offer my apologies to Mr. Matthew for my entire ignorance of this publication. If another edition of my work is called for, I will insert to the foregoing effect.3 In the Historical Sketch4 which he added to the later editions of his book Darwin gives Matthew credit for the Nature’s law of selection in the following words: In 1831 Mr. Patrick Matthew published his work on “ Naval Timber and Arboriculture,” in which he gives precisely the same view on the origin of species as that (presently to be alluded to) propounded by Mr. W allace and myself in the Linnean Journal, and as that enlarged in the present volume. Unfortunately, the view was given by Mr. Matthew very briefly in scattered passages in an Appendix to a work on a different subject, so that it remained unnoticed until Mr. Matthew himself drew attention to it in the Gardeners’ Chronicle, on April 7th, 1860. The differences of Mr. Matthew’s view from mine are not of much importance: he seems to consider that the world was nearly depopulated at successive periods, and then re-stocked; and he gives as an alternative, that new forms may be generated “ without the presence of any mould or germ of former aggregates.” I am not sure that I understand some passages; but it seems that he attributes much in- fluence to the direct action of the conditions of life. He clearly saw, however, the full force of the principle of natural selection.5 In a letter written by Darwin to J. L. A. de Quatrefages on April 25, 1861, he referred to Patrick Matthew’s ex- planation in a postscript as follows: I have lately read M. Naudin’s paper, but it does not seem to me to anticipate me, as he does not show how selection could be applied under 3 Ibid. * ‘ ‘ The Origin of Species,” 1878, p. xvi—Historical Sketch. 6 Ibid.