What the Bible Says

1
What the Bible Says Genesis 111-12 And God
said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb
yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit
after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the
earth and it was so. And the earth brought
forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his
kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was
in itself, after his kind and God saw that it
was good. Genesis 124-25 And God said, Let the
earth bring forth the living creature after his
kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of
the earth after his kind and it was so. And God
made the beast of the earth after his kind, and
cattle after their kind, and every thing that
creepeth upon the earth after his kind and God
saw that it was good.
2
Of all clean birds ye shall eat. But these are
they of which ye shall not eat The eagle, and
the ossifrage, and the ospray, And the glede,
and the kite, and the vulture after his kind,
And every raven after his kind, And the owl,
and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk
after his kind, The little owl, and the great
owl, and the swan, And the pelican, and the gier
eagle, and the cormorant, And the stork, and the
heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the
bat. Deuteronomy 1411-18, King James Version
3
Plato (427 347 B.C.E.) Plato believed that the
world is a mirage, that the only things that
really exist are immutable Forms or Ideas, and
that objects in the real world are just
evanescent shadows of these Forms.
In Book 7 of The Republic Plato explains this
concept using the allegory of a cave with
prisoners watching shadows on a wall producing by
firelight shining over the real objects.
4
Essentialism Essentialism, based on Platos
concept of Forms, dominated Western thought for
over 2000 years and impeded progress in biology.
There was an ideal form of each animal and plant
individuals varied a little from the ideal form
because they were imperfect copies, but the ideal
form was divine, deathless, intelligible,
uniform, indissoluble, always the same as
itself. (Platos Phaedo) This concept was
antithetical to the concept of evolution.
5
Aristotle and the Scala Naturae Aristotle (384
322 B.C.E.) did believe in reality, and developed
a natural philosophy that included many of
todays sciences, particularly physics and
biology. He visualized nature as a ladder (the
scala naturae) with earth at the bottom, then
plants, then animals, then humans.
Plato and Aristotle in Raphaels The School of
Athens
6
Scala Naturae The Great Chain of
Being Christianity added angels and God to the
ladder, the great chain of being, with earth
and minerals at the bottom, then plants, animals,
humans, angels, and God in progressively higher
levels. Some levels were subdivided into
higher and lower animals, higher and lower humans
(peasants, aristocrats, kings), and so forth.
7
A sample of Aristotles biological writing Of
birds, some take a dust-bath by rolling in dust,
some take a water-bath, and some take neither the
one bath nor the other. Birds that do not fly
but keep on the ground take the dust-bath, as for
instance the hen, the partridge, the francolin,
the crested lark, the pheasant some of the
straight-taloned birds, and such as live on the
banks of a river, in marshes, or by the sea, take
a water-bath some birds take both the dust-bath
and the water-bath, as for instance the pigeon
and the sparrow of the crooked-taloned birds the
greater part take neither the one bath nor the
other. History of Animals, Book IX, 49B.
8
A story by Aristotle A story goes that the king
of Scythia had a highly-bred mare, and that all
her foals were splendid that wishing to mate the
best of the young males with the mother, he had
him brought to the stall for the purpose that
the young horse declined that, after the
mothers head had been concealed in a wrapper he,
in ignorance, had intercourse and that, when
immediately afterwards the wrapper was removed
and the head of the mare was rendered visible,
the young horse ran away and hurled himself down
a precipice. History of Animals, Book IX, 47.
9
The Immutability of Species For centuries it was
believed that the different kinds of animals
and plants had been created exactly as they were
today, and had never changed they were
immutable. Also, because Gods creation was
perfect, no animal or plant created by God had
ever become extinct. Evidence began accumulating
in the 18th and 19th century that there were
extinct organisms also, immutability became
suspect.
10

• The Species Question
• What is a species? How can you tell if two
  organisms are the same species or different
  species? If two organisms can interbreed, are
  they of the same species? If they cant, are
  they of different species? How can you tell if
  one organism is descended from the other, or both
  are descended from a (recent) common ancestor?
• Example of questions relating to species
• Modern humans (Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals
  (Homo neandertalis) are considered different
  species. Did H. neandertalis evolve into H.
  sapiens or were they both descended from some
  common ancestor? In either case, could or did
  they interbreed, and does H. sapiens have any H.
  neandertalis genes?
• Wolves, jackals, coyotes, and dogs can all
  interbreed with one another. Are they one
  species, or different species, and if the latter,
  how many?

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The Species Question Are sugar maples and red
maples and Japanese maples all members of the
same species, maybe just different varieties
(whatever that means) of that species, or are
they different species? Are Clemson Spineless
okra and Red okra different species, or just
varieties in a single species (okra)? What
distinguishes species from varieties? For
centuries most botanists and zoologists felt they
knew the difference, but they didnt always agree
with one another. Those who carefully examined
the species question usually became confused and
uncertain the more they studied it.
12
Different Species Concepts Traditionally, two
groups of animals or plants were regarded as
belonging to different species if they appeared
to be sufficiently different different types
or kinds of organisms. But by this definition
a monarch caterpillar and a monarch butterfly
were different species. Today, the biological
species concept is generally accepted Species
are groups of interbreeding natural populations
that are reproductively isolated from other such
groups. Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is
(2001) Wolves, jackals and coyotes are three
natural populations that could but do not
interbreed, so they are different species. Many
examples are known of sibling species which
resemble each other, live in the same area, but
do not interbreed.
13
Ring Species Larus gulls In Europe there are
two different species of gulls known as the
herring gull and the lesser black-backed gull,
the former living in Norway and the latter in
Norway and the British Isles. They do not
interbreed. Go around the north pole and the
fact that they are different species becomes
difficult to claim.
Two different species of gulls in Norway on the
left, the herring gull, and on the right, the
lesser black-backed gull.
14
Around the arctic there is a ring in which the
Larus gulls live. Going west from the British
Isles, the lesser black-backed gull slowly
changes into slightly different gulls such as the
American herring gull, the Vega herring gull,
etc., finally becoming the herring gull in
Norway! Are these one species of gull, or two?
15
The Ensatina Salamander Around the Central
Valley of California, up the mountains a little,
not down in the valley, are found a ring of
Ensatina salamanders. Any two neighboring
populations of these salamanders can and do
interbreed. But on the western side, at the
south end, is the plain Ensatina eschscholtzii,
and on the eastern side, at the south end, is the
large blotched Ensatina klauberi. These two
species do not interbreed, so they appear to be
different species by the biological species
concept. However, they are morphologically
identical and actually can interbreed, as if they
were a single species.
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17
Important Biologists Before Darwin John Ray
(1627 1705) Karl Linnaeus (1707 1778) Comte
de Buffon (1707 1788) Erasmus Darwin (1731
1802) Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744
1829) Georges Cuvier (1769 1832)
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John Ray (1627 1705) English naturalist
really the father of English natural
history. Published important works on plants,
animals, and natural theology. Taught for a time
at Trinity College, Cambridge, where Francis
Willughby (1635 1672) was first his pupil,
later his colleague and patron after Ray lost his
position for not subscribing to the 1661 Act of
Uniformity.
19
John Rays Books Catalogus plantarum Angliae
(1670) catalogued English plants, and was the
basis for all later such works. Methodus planarum
nova (1682) described Rays method of classifying
plants, with particular emphasis on the
difference between monocotyledons and
dicotyldeons (plants germinating with one or two
leaves). Historia generalis plantarum (3 vols.,
1686, 1688, 1704) was his great taxonomic work.
The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the
Creation (1691) was a very popular book espousing
what came to be known as natural theology.
20
Non-Botanical Writings by Ray and Willoughby John
Ray was fond of amassing facts about many things,
as shown by the subjects of some of his
non-biological books Collection of English
Proverbs (1670), Collection of Out-of-the-way
English Words (1674), and Collection of Curious
Travels and Voyages (1693). Francis Willugby made
a scientific study of games, which was published
in 2003 as Francis Willughbys Book of Games. It
included a charming early description of football
(the word he used), which used a close that has
a gate at either end the gates are called
Goals. The ball? They blow a strong bladder
and tie the neck of it as fast as they can, and
then put it into the skin of a bull's cod and sew
it fast in. The harder the ball is blown, the
better it flies. They used to put quicksilver
into it sometimes to keep it from lying still.
21
Carl Linnaeus Carl von Linné (Carolus
Linnaeus) (1707 1778) Swedish biologist
considered the father of modern taxonomy. Most of
his life as a student and professor (from 1741)
was spent at Uppsala University. Invented the
bionomial nomenclature for organisms (e.g., Homo
sapiens, Taraxacum officinale).
22
Linnaeus 1743 created the modern Celsius
temperature scale by fixing the melting point of
ice at 0º and the boiling point of water at 100º,
instead of the other way around as Anders Celsius
had done! Created a taxonomy consisting of three
kingdoms animal, vegetable (plants) and
mineral. His classification of plants and (to a
lesser degree) animals became widely
accepted. Kingdoms were divided into Classes,
which were divided into Orders, which were
divided into Genera (singular genus), which were
divided into Species, and then sometimes into
taxa of a lower (unnamed) rank, essentially what
we now call varieties in the case of plants.
23
Linnaeus The first edition of Linnaeus Systema
Naturae, printed in the Netherlands in 1735, was
only 11 pages long. Linnaeus kept adding to it
and its 10th edition (1758) classified 4,400
species of animals and 7,700 species of
plants. The bionomial nomenclature Linnaeus used
had been developed in the late 16th and early
17th century by the Swiss botanists (brothers)
Gaspard and Johann Bauhin, for some of the 6000
plants they described in their works, but it was
Linnaeus who used it consistently and
systematically. Linnaeus names are still in use,
denoted by L. after the name, although modern
genetic techniques have forced considerable
revisions in his scheme. For example, okra is
Hibiscus esculentus L. but today is called
Abelmoschus esculentus it was formerly regarded
as a species of hibiscus but now is placed in the
mallow family and only regarded as related to
hibiscus.
24
Two portraits of Linnaeus his wedding portrait
(1739) and one showing him in a Lapp costume
(1737).
25
Linnaea borealis (Twinflower) This flower, which
he apparently first saw in Lapland, was Linnaeus
favorite flower, named after him by his teacher,
Jan Frederik Gronovius. He is seen holding it in
many of his portraits, and he used it as his
symbol when he was made a noble in 1757.
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Borage or Starflower
27
Scientific classification of the Cicada-Killer
Wasp Kingdom AnimaliaPhylum
ArthropodaSubphylum HexapodaClass
InsectaSubclass PterygotaInfraclass
NeopteraSuperorder EndopterygotaOrder
HymenopteraSuborder ApocritaInfraorder
AculeataSuperfamily ApoideaFamily
CrabronidaeSubfamily BembicinaeTribe
GorytiniGenus Sphecius (Dahlbom, 1844)
Species some 20 species described
28
Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon (1701
1788) French mathematician, biologist,
cosmologist, naturalist. Keeper of the Jardin du
Roi (now Jardin des Plantes) in Paris. Author of
the incredible Histoire naturelle (44 volumes),
translated into many languages.
29
Buffon Early in his career, he did important
work in probability theory, using calculus. He
solved the problem known as Buffons needle, the
first geometric probability problem. If a needle
of length l is dropped onto a plane with parallel
lines a distance t apart, the probability that
the needle will cross a line is 2l/tp, which can
be used to estimate p.
Needle a crosses a line, needle b does not.
Actually, the needle can be a (plane) noodle!
(Buffons noodle)
30
Buffon His Histoire naturelle, générale et
particulière was published from beginning in 1749
in 44 volumes (8 after his death). It contained
everything known about the natural world at the
time. It is online at www.buffon.cnrs.fr. Right
A giant octopus attacking a ship (Buffon,
1805). In fact, there exists a giant squid but
no giant octopus, and the giant squid does not
attack ships.
31
Buffon Buffon first explained the true
greenhouse effect in a greenhouse, whose
interior heats up when it is sunny (but not the
atmospheric greenhouse effect). Buffons Law
(biogeography) Buffon noted that different
places, even though they had nearly the same
environment, had different plants and animals.
He attributed this to changing (evolving) after
dispersal from the place of their
creation. Darwin greatly admired Buffon. Today
we realize that his views of evolution were more
correct than those of Lamarck and Cuvier, who
came after him.
32

• Erasmus Darwin (1731 1802)
• Received his medical degree at Cambridge in 1755
  after studying at Cambridge and Edinburgh
• Became a physician at Litchfield and later Derby
• Emphasized the power of the mind and paid close
  attention to mental as well as physical
  conditions regarded many illnesses as having a
  mental origin.
• Offered (but declined) post of Royal Physician
  by George III
  

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• Erasmus Darwin (1731 1802)
• He believed in the hearty joys of women, food,
  a little gardening and agricultural improvement,
  some practical inventions to discuss with
  friends, and agreeable company in the evenings,
  with good books and plenty of children for his
  old age. Janet Browne, vol. 1, page 37
• Had a large physique and became so fat that a
  semicircle had to be cut into his dining table so
  he could dine at it and be able to reach his
  food.
• Pockmarked from smallpox contracted in his early
  years.

34

• Erasmus Darwins Progeny
• Father of at least 14 children with two wives
  and one mistress.
• First wife Mary Howard (1739 1770) died of
  alcoholism, so Darwin insisted on his family and
  patients never using alcohol. She gave birth to
  five children, with three sons (Charles, Erasmus,
  Robert) surviving.
• Fathered two illegitimate children with a young
  woman (Mrs. Parker) who cared for the young
  children and became his mistress.
• Married a widow, Elizabeth Pole (illegitimate
  daughter of an aristocrat), and had seven more
  children by her.

35
Children of Erasmus Darwin and Mary Howard
Darwin Charles (1758 1778) very gifted and
intelligent and intended for a medical career
like his father died at age of 19 from an
infection, possibly picked up during a postmortem
examination. Erasmus (1759 1799) encouraged
by his father to go into law, but was not
successful, became depressed, and committed
suicide. Robert Waring Darwin (1766 1848)
pushed into a medical career by his father, who
sent him to Edinburgh and constantly sought
favors on Roberts behalf, even though Robert
hated medicine and would never have chosen it as
a profession so he resolved never to treat his
own sons that way. Erasmus Darwin had little to
do with Erasmus and Robert after remarrying and
seeing to their education he was more
interested in his newest family.
36
Erasmus Darwins Writings Many poems Poems about
nature and evolution The Economy of
Vegetation The Loves of the Plants The Temple
of Nature Prose works for scientists Zoonomia
(1794 1796) Phytologia (1800)
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The Loves of Plants The most delicious poem upon
earth. How strange it is that a man should have
been inspired with such a enthusiasm of poetry by
poring through a microscope, and peeping through
the keyholes of all the seraglios of all the
flowers in the universe! Horace Walpole
38
Erasmus Darwins Take on Evolution Life appeared
spontaneously early in earths history Self-genera
ted variation and diversification led to all
modern plants and animals, including humans No
original creation or divine intervention was
necessary nature had its own laws of nature.
(Erasmus Darwin was apparently an unbeliever, but
never publicly denied the existence of
God.) Mechanism of evolution development of
useful characteristics passed on to succeeding
generations basically, Lamarcks theory of the
inheritance of acquired characteristics.
39
Organic Life beneath the shoreless waves Was born
and nursd in Oceans pearly caves First forms
minute, unseen by spheric glass
microscope, Move on the mud, or pierce the
watery mass These as successive generations
bloom, New powers acquire, and larger limbs
assume And breathing realms of fin, and feet,
and wing, Thus the tall Oak, the giant of the
wood, Which bears Britannias thunders on the
flood The Whale, unmeasured monster of the
plain, The Eagle soaring in the realms of
air, Whose eye undazzled drinks the solar
glare, Imperious man, who rules the bestial
crowd, Of language, reason, and reflection
proud, With brow erect who scorns this earthy
sod, And styles himself the image of his
God Arose from rudiments of form and sense, An
embryon point, or microscopic ens!
40
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744 1829)
11th child in an impoverished aristocratic
military family in Picardie. A soldier for
several years until injured, after which he took
up the study of medicine. Made important
contributions to cell theory, botany,
invertebrate zoology, and evolutionary
theory. Became a member of the French Academy of
Sciences in 1779.
41
Lamarck In 1781 Lamarck became a Royal Botanist
associated with the great Jardin du Roi (Garden
of the King) in Paris in 1790, during the
French Revolution, he renamed it the Jardin des
Plantes (Garden of Plants), by which it is
still known today. Between 1800 and 1822 he
developed the first coherent evolutionary theory.
Note This was after he turned 56. While
believing (like most biologists of his day) in
the continual spontaneous generation of simple
forms of life, he believed in transmutation, the
changing of organisms into more complex forms in
accordance with physical and chemical principles,
in a strictly materialistic manner he referred
to this as Le pouvoir de la vie (The force of
life). But also, organisms evolved through
Linfluence des circonstances (The influence of
the environment), becoming adapted to their
local environment.
42
Lamarcks Great Escalator of Being Originally an
essentialist, Lamarck became convinced that
molluscs changed (transmutation) over
time. Instead of a great ladder of being,
Lamarck visualized a great escalator of living
things, all species constantly moving up the
ladder, becoming more complex, while simple new
beings were spontaneously generated at the
bottom. The upward movement was evolution.
43
The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics Lamar
ck believed that the use and disuse of characters
powered adaptation In every animal which has
not passed the limit of its development, a more
frequent and continuous use of any organ
gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that
organ, and gives it a power proportional to the
length of time it has been so used while the
permanent disuse of any organ imperceptibly
weakens and deteriorates it, and progressively
diminishes its functional capacity, until it
finally disappears. Lamarck believed these
characters were then inherited, a common belief
in his time this is referred to as soft
inheritance and was accepted by most 19th
century biologists.
44
Lamarck was the first to use the word biology
in its modern sense. Lamarck was constantly
attacked by Cuvier, who did not believe in
evolution, and so became something of a
scientific pariah Cuvier was in and Lamarck
was out. When he died in Paris in 1829, he was
very poor, his family had to seek government
assistance, and he himself was originally buried
in a lime-pit. Today, he is highly regarded for
his work and his belief in and theorizing about
evolution, although his theory of the soft
inheritance of acquired characters which was
the best theory Darwin knew about was disproved
in the late 19th century by the work of August
Weismann, who demonstrated the difference between
somatic (body) and genetic (reproductive) cells.
45
Georges Cuvier (1769 1832) French naturalist
and zoologist who compared fossil animals with
living animals and established the fields of
comparative anatomy and paleontology.
46
Cuvier and His Career Cuvier was actually German,
his original name Johann Leopold Nicolaus
Friedrich Kuefer, and he was educated in Germany.
He came to France as a tutor to an aristocratic
family in Normandy, and remained in France the
rest of his life. A Protestant (Lutheran), he
nevertheless was politically savvy and held many
positions at French universities and in French
scientific organizations, before, during, and
after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic
Era. A real survivor. His career was long and
varied and dealt with both living and fossil
animals.
47
Cuviers Principle of Correlation of
Parts Today comparative anatomy has reached
such a point of perfection that, after inspecting
a single bone, one can often determine the class,
and sometimes even the genus of the animal to
which it belonged, above all if that bone
belonged to the head or the limbs. ... This is
because the number, direction, and shape of the
bones that compose each part of an animal's body
are always in a necessary relation to all the
other parts, in such a way that up to a point
one can infer the whole from any one of them and
vice versa.
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Cuviers Ideas Cuviers work paved the way for
the theory of evolution, but he himself did not
believe in evolution. He believed that all
present organisms had been created exactly as
they were now and had never changed, pointing out
that mummified cats and other animals in ancient
Egyptian tombs were identical to those of
today. He believed that fossils were the remains
of previously existing organisms that had become
extinct through some great catastrophe.
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Glimpses of Natural Selection before
Darwin Several authors before Darwin wrote
articles or books that mentioned something like
natural selection, but none had any great impact,
and none of the authors had fully developed their
theories. William Charles Wells (1757
1817) Patrick Mathew (1790 1864) Edward Blyth
(1810 1873)
50
William Charles Wells (1757 1817) Wells was a
Scottish-American physician, born in Charleston,
South Carolina, educated in Scotland, who
practiced in South Carolina. In 1818, shortly
after his death, a book entitled Two essays
appeared which contained an appendix on An
account of a female of the white race of mankind,
part of whose skin resembles that of a negro,
with some observations on the cause of the
differences in colour and form between the white
and negro races of man. This appendix described
the idea of natural selection.
51
Key quotation from Wells What was done for
animals artificially seems to be done with equal
efficiency, though more slowly, by nature, in the
formation of varieties of mankind, fitted for the
country which they inhabit. Of the accidental
varieties of man, which would occur among the
first scattered inhabitants, some one would be
better fitted than the others to bear the
diseases of the country. This race would multiply
while the others would decrease, and as the
darkest would be the best fitted for the
African climate, at length they would become
the most prevalent, if not the only race. Note
that Wells discussed natural selection only in
reference to humans.
52
Patrick Mathew (1790 1864) Patrick Matthew was
a prosperous Scottish landowner and fruit
farmer. In 1831 he published a book, On Naval
Timber and Arboriculture, which described the
principles of good timber forestry for the
purpose of furnishing wood suitable for building
the Royal Navys ships. He wrote that using only
the best trees led to poorer trees in the timber
forests, and advocated removing the poorer trees
in the forests. This would lead to better trees
and even new varieties of trees.
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There is a law universal in nature, tending to
render every reproductive being the best possible
suited to its condition that its kind, or
organized matter, is susceptible of, which
appears intended to model the physical and mental
or instinctive powers to their highest perfection
and to continue them so. This law sustains the
lion in his strength, the hare in her swiftness,
and the fox in his wiles. As nature, in all her
modifications of life, has a power of increase
far beyond what is needed to supply the place of
what falls by Time's decay, those individuals who
possess not the requisite strength, swiftness,
hardihood, or cunning, fall prematurely without
reproducingeither a prey to their natural
devourers, or sinking under disease, generally
induced by want of nourishment, their place being
occupied by the more perfect of their own kind,
who are pressing on the means of subsistence . . .
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There is more beauty and unity of design in this
continual balancing of life to circumstance, and
greater conformity to those dispositions of
nature which are manifest to us, than in total
destruction and new creation . . . The progeny
of the same parents, under great differences of
circumstance, might, in several generations, even
become distinct species, incapable of
co-reproduction. Matthews chief argument is
given in the Appendix to his book, which
attracted no attention, although it is also
mentioned in the main text. Matthew claimed, and
Darwin agreed, that he had anticipated the theory
of evolution by natural selection, although he
had not developed his ideas and, indeed, wrote
many years later that there was evidence of
design and benevolence in nature, and, in
particular, that beauty could not result from
natural selection. Consequently, he is not given
much credit today for his ideas.
55
Edward Blyth (1810 1873) Edward Blyth was
originally a pharmacist, but decided to become a
writer. In 1841 he was offered the curatorship
of the museum of the Royal Asiatic Society of
Bengal, so he went to India and remained there
until poor health forced him to return to England
in 1862. Blyth was poor most of his life, as he
was not paid much for his work. Nevertheless, he
worked hard and accomplished quite a bit as a
naturalist. He obtained many bird specimens from
fieldworkers and wrote about them many birds of
the area are named after him.
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Edward Blyth was a correspondent of Darwins and
a fairly close friend all his life he is often
mentioned in Darwins books. In three articles
published between1835 and 1837 in The Natural
History Magazine (before he went to India) he
described natural selection quite well, but
thought of it only as a mechanism for preserving
the original type of an organism, not for
producing evolution or new species. Blyth was
definitely a creationist. Darwin appears to have
overlooked the significance of these articles,
judging from his notebooks, probably from not
being ready to think about mechanisms for
evolution, or from not regarding species as
immutable.