3 Book of Common Prayer, Collins, London and Glasgow.
4. Darwin, Charles, The Life of Erasmus Darwin, p.37.
5. Ibid, pp.84–9.
6. Ibid, p.35.
7. Ibid, p.57.
8. Ibid, p.59–60.
9. Ibid.
10. Oxford Dictionaries Online.
11. Darwin, Charles, The Life of Erasmus Darwin, p.63.
12. Darwin, Francis, op. cit., p.13.
Chapter 24
Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet Chevalier de Lamarck was born in Bazentin, France in 1744. Like Darwin, he was to sample a number of different careers before finding his true vocation in life.
He was destined by his father for an ecclesiastical career, and was entered as a student at the Jesuit College at Amiens. Yet he himself had no inclination to the calling desired by his father; and on the death of the latter in 1760, he made immediate use of his new liberty to leave the Jesuit College and join the French army … .1
However, having been forced to abandon the military, owing to ill health, he embarked on the study of medicine. But, once again, his life took a different turn when, through the influence of French political philosopher and educationist Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he became interested in botany and, in 1773, published his Flore Française (French Flora) in three volumes, which gained him entrance to the French Academy of Sciences.
In 1782 Lamarck became Keeper of the Herbarium at the Jardin du Roi in Paris. The herbarium was subsequently incorporated into the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle when it was founded in 1793, and two chairs of botany were created, one of which was offered to Lamarck. He then became Professor of Invertebrate Zoology – even though he was a botanist of twenty-five years standing!2 In 1809, Lamarck’s Philosophie Zoologique was published, of which he declared
Experience in teaching has made me feel how useful a philosophical zoology would be at the present time. By this I mean a body of rules and principles, relative to the study of animals, and applicable to the other divisions of the natural sciences … . [To this end] I found myself compelled to consider the organization of the various known animals, to pay attention to the singular differences which it presents in those of each family, each order, and especially each class … .
Nonetheless, in his scientific researches, Lamarck makes it clear that he is determined to
respect the decrees of that infinite wisdom [i.e. God] and confine myself to the sphere of a pure observer of nature. If I succeed in unravelling anything in her methods, I shall say without fear of error that it is has pleased the Author of nature to endow her with that faculty and power.3
In the event, however, rather than being a mere ‘observer of nature’, Lamarck finds that he cannot resist making deductions in respect of his scientific data, and when he does so, he ties himself in proverbial knots as he attempts to reconcile his observations with Biblical Creationist teachings – as will now be seen.
Evolution: how animals perfect themselves
Lamarck observed that
in ascending the animals’ scale, starting from the most imperfect animals, organization gradually increases in complexity in an extremely remarkable manner.
I was greatly strengthened in this belief, moreover, when I recognized that in the simplest of all organisms there were no special organs whatever, and that the body had no special faculty but only those which are the property of all living things. As nature successively creates the different special organs, and thus builds up the animal organization, special functions arise to a corresponding degree, and in the most perfect animals these are numerous and highly developed.4
How was the increasing complexity of the animal kingdom achieved? Lamarck believed that he had the answer.
Firstly, a number of known facts proves that the continued use of any organ leads to its development, strengthens it and even enlarges it, while permanent disuse of any organ is injurious to its development, causes it to deteriorate and ultimately disappear if the disuse continues for a long period through successive generations. Hence we may infer that when some change in the environment leads to a change of habit in some race of animals, the organs that are less used die away little by little, while those which are more used develop better, and acquire a vigour and size proportional to their use.5
In other words, environmental changes could produce variations, albeit indirectly, by first inducing a change in behaviour. Amongst the many examples quoted by Lamarck of how animals (allegedly) adapt their shapes and sizes to suit their environment, the example of the giraffe is one of the most graphic.
This animal, the largest of the mammals, is known to live in the interior of Africa in places where the soil is nearly always arid and barren, so that it is obliged to browse on the leaves of trees and to make constant efforts to reach them. From this habit long maintained in all its race, it has resulted that the animal’s fore-legs have become longer than its hind legs, and that its neck is lengthened to such a degree that the giraffe, without standing up on its hind legs, attains a height of six metres (nearly twenty feet).6
Attractive though Lamarck’s theory may appear to be, he was unable to produce any scientific evidence to support it.
The spontaneous generation of life
Lamarck differentiates ‘between the act of fertilization which prepares an embryo for the possession of life, and the act of nature which gives rise to direct generations …’.7 And he believed that such ‘spontaneous generations’ occur in both the animal and plant kingdoms.8
Lamarck’s views on variation
It was previously believed, said Lamarck, ‘that every species is invariable and as old as nature, and that it was specially created by the Supreme Author of all existing things’. This was not the case, and he goes on to refer to ‘the changes which nature is incessantly producing in every part without exception’.9 However, echoing the thoughts of Darwin, he pointed out that what
prevents us from recognizing the successive changes by which known animals have been diversified … is … that we can never witness these changes. Since we only see the finished work and never see it in course of execution, we are naturally prone to believe that things have always been as we see them rather than that they have gradually developed.10
This is an entirely reasonable statement by Lamarck, bearing in mind that variations may take place over an enormous timescale. Finally, anxious not to ‘tread on the toes’ of God the Creator, Lamarck is quick to affirm that ‘doubtless nothing exists but by the will of the Sublime Author of all things’,11 and that an ‘assemblage [i.e. a life form] …, is only immutable so long as it pleases her Sublime Author to continue her existence …’.12
NOTES
1. Lamarck, Zoological Philosophy, p.xvii.
2. Ibid, pp.xvii-xx.
3. Ibid, p.36.
4. Ibid, pp.1–2.
5. Ibid, p.2.
6. Ibid, p.122.
7. Ibid, p.242.
8. Ibid, p.247.
9. Ibid, pp.178.
10. Ibid, pp.179–80.
11. Ibid, p.36.
12. Ibid, pp.179–80.
Chapter 25
Patrick Matthew
On 7 April 1860 a letter appeared in the Gardeners’ Chronicle which Darwin read, and which must surely have given him an enormous jolt.
NATURE’S LAW OF SELECTION
TRUSTING to your desire that every man should have his own, I hope you will give place to the following communication.
In your Number of March 3 [r]d I observe a long quotation from the Times, stating that Mr Darwin ‘professes to have discovered the existence and modus operandi of the natural law of selection,’ that is, ‘the power in nature which takes the place of man and performs a selection, sua sponte [of its own accord],’ in organic life. This discovery recently published as ‘the results of 20 years’ investigation and reflection’ by Mr Darwin turns out to be what I published very fully and brought to apply practically to forestry i
n my work ‘[On] Naval Timber and Arboriculture,’ published as far back as January 1, 1831, by Adam & Charles Black, Edinburgh, and Longman & Co., London, and reviewed in numerous periodicals, so as to have full publicity in the ‘Metropolitan Magazine,’ the ‘Quarterly Review,’ the ‘Gardeners’ Magazine,’ by Loudon [see below], who spoke of it as the book, and repeatedly in the ‘United Service Magazine [United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine] for 1831, &c.
The author of the letter, Patrick Matthew, then proceeds to quote extensively from his book.
According to the Scottish zoologist William T. Calman,
Patrick Matthew was born on 20 October 1790 at Rome, a farm held by his father, John Matthew, on the banks of the Tay near Scone Palace [Perthshire, Scotland]. His mother, Agnes Duncan, was related, though in what degree is not known, to the family of Admiral Duncan, the famous ancestor of the present Earl of Camperdown. [British Admiral Adam Duncan (1731–1804), who defeated the Dutch in the Battle of Camperdown (1797).] From her [his mother] he inherited the estate of Gourdiehill before attaining his twentieth year. He was educated at Perth Academy and at the University of Edinburgh, but his stay at the latter cannot have been of long duration, for, on his father’s death, he undertook at the age of seventeen, the management of the estate of Gourdiehill, near Errol, Perthshire.1 This estate he inherited from the Duncan family, in whose possession it had been for more than 300 years. One of his first employments there was the planting of an extensive orchard …
Having inherited Gourdiehill, Matthew commenced the transformation of much of its farmland into orchards devoted to the growing of apples and pears. (The 1831 Quarterly Journal of Agriculture contained a seven-page article on the pruning of trees by a Mr Matthew of Gourdie-Hill.)2 ‘In 1817 he married his cousin, Christian Nicol, whose mother Euphemia, was a sister of Agnes Duncan.’3
Perhaps on account of his family connections to the Royal Navy, and his own period of life at sea (see below), Matthew became interested in how to grow trees suitable for use in the production of warships. The outcome was that, in 1831, his book On Naval Timber and Arboriculture was published. In it he declared that
It is only on the Ocean that Universal Empire [i.e. the British] is practicable – only by means of Navigation that all the world can be subdued or retained under one dominion.4
To return to the year 1860, on 21 April, two weeks after the publication of Matthew’s letter in the Gardeners’ Chronicle, the following letter from Darwin himself, was published:
I have been much interested by Mr Patrick Matthew’s communication in the number of your paper dated April 7th. I freely acknowledge that Mr Matthew has anticipated by many years the explanation which I have offered of the origin of species, under 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 a notice to the foregoing effect.5
The Gardeners’ Chronicle published the following statement by Matthew on 12 May, describing how he had reached his conclusions.
To me the conception of this law of Nature came intuitively as a self-evident fact, almost without an effort of concentrated thought. Mr Darwin here seems to have more merit [i.e. to have been afforded more credit] in the discovery than I have had; to me it did not appear a discovery. He seems to have worked it out by inductive reason, slowly and with due caution to have made his way synthetically from fact to fact onwards; while with me it was by a general glance at the scheme of Nature that I estimated this select production of species as an à priori recognizable fact — an axiom requiring only to be pointed out to be admitted by unprejudiced minds of sufficient grasp.6
Matthew subsequently complained that an article published on 24 November in the Saturday Analyst and Leader, was
scarcely fair in alluding to Mr Darwin as the parent of the origin of species, seeing that I published the whole [i.e. everything] that Mr. Darwin attempts to prove, more than twenty-nine years ago.7
Nonetheless, Darwin kept his promise to Matthew, and when the third edition of Origin was published in April 1861, it contained the following statement
In 1831 Mr Patrick Matthew published his work on Naval Timber & Arboriculture, in which he gives precisely the same view on the origin of species as that propounded by Mr Wallace and myself in the Linnean Journal and as that enlarged on 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 … . I am not sure that I understand some passages; but it seems that he attributes much influence to the direct action of the conditions of life [i.e. the environment]. He clearly saw, however, the full force of the principle of natural selection.8
Was Matthew correct in stating that his book had been reviewed in ‘numerous periodicals’?
The answer is, yes, in the case of three at any rate (although it has not been possible to trace the review in the Metropolitan Magazine – a London monthly journal of literature, science, and the fine arts):
a) Quarterly Review (a literary and political periodical)
Here, the entry, published in the April-July 1833 number under the heading ‘On Naval Timber and Arboriculture; with critical notes by Patrick Matthew’, was concerned principally with timber rot.
The author … introduces one of the most important branches of his subject in these terms: we greatly wonder that something efficacious has not been done by our Navy Board in regard to dry rot; and consider that a rot-prevention-officer wood physician should be appointed to each vessel of war, from the time the first timber is laid down, to be made accountable if rot to any extent should occur … .
The reviewer also admits that Matthew’s book ‘on the whole, is not a bad one …’.9
b) Gardeners’ Magazine — and Register of Rural and Domestic Improvement (a periodical devoted solely to horticulture, for the benefit of gardeners throughout the country and founded in 1826 by Scotsman John Claudius Loudon, garden designer and author).10 Extracts from its 1832 review of Matthew’s book are quoted below.11
The author introductorily maintains that the best interests of Britain consist in the extension of her dominion on the ocean; and that, as a means to this end, naval architecture is a subject of primary importance; and, by consequence, the culture and production of naval timber is also very important. He explains, by description and by figures, the forms and qualities of planks and timbers most in request in the construction of ships; and then describes those means of cultivating trees, which he considers most effectively conducive to the production of these required planks and timbers.
‘The British forest trees suited for naval purposes,’ enumerated by the author, are, oak, Spanish chestnut, beech, Scotch elm, English elm, red-wood willow (Sâlix frágilis), red-wood pine, and white larch. On each of these he presents a series of remarks regarding the relative merits of their timber ….
Two hundred and twenty-two pages are occupied by ‘Notices of authors relative to timber’ [i.e. critical reviews of the works of other authors].
Finally, a brief mention is made of the ‘Appendix’ in which Matthew claimed to have proposed his ‘theory of natural selection’.
An appendix of 29 pages concludes the book, and receives some parenthetical evolutions of certain extraneous points which the author struck upon in prosecuting the thesis of his book. This may be truly termed, in a double sense, an extraordinary part of the book. One of the subjects discussed in this appendix is the puzzling one, of the origin of species and varieties; and if the author has
hereon originated no original views (and of this we are far from certain), he has certainly exhibited his own in an original manner.12
c) United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine
This review ran to approximately 13,000 words and appeared in two parts – in the 1831 Part II and the 1831 Part III numbers of the magazine respectively. The reviewer was generally appreciative of Matthew’s book, stating that
The British Navy has such urgent claims upon the vigilance of every patriot, as the bulwark of his independence and happiness, that any effort for supporting and improving its strength, lustre, and dignity, must meet with unqualified attention.13
No mention was made of the book’s ‘Appendix’.
Finally, it should be noted that the Edinburgh Literary Journal also reviewed Matthew’s book in its number dated 2 July 1831; a fact which, not surprisingly, he failed to mention, as the review was scarcely complimentary.
This is a publication of as great promise, and as paltry performance, as ever came under our critical inspection. From its title … it will probably attract readers; but the intelligent among them will suffer considerable disappointment in the perusal, as we must say that there are not ten pages of really new matter in the volume … .
Can Darwin be blamed for not having been aware of the existence of Matthew’s book On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, and of the significance of its contents?
i. Darwin was abroad, voyaging on HMS Beagle from the time the ship set sail on 27 December 1831 until her return on 2 October 1836. He was, therefore, thousands of miles from home, both when Matthew’s On Naval Timber & Arboriculture was published in January 1831, and also when the book was reviewed in 1831/2/3. He may, therefore, be forgiven for being unaware of the book’s existence during this period.
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