Patrick Matthew

(Narration)

‘… if the first description was originally imperfect, & had been superseded by any better description, it would perhaps be better to omit all reference to it, for the sooner such an author’s name was buried in oblivion the better.’

                                                                                            (Charles Darwin 1849)

(Narration)

‘This discovery recently published by Mr. Darwin turns out to be what I published very fully... as far back as January 1, 1831... reviewed in numerous periodicals, so as to have full publicity...by Loudon…and repeatedly in the United Service Magazine for 1831 etc.’

                                         (Patrick Matthew 1860)

(Narration)

‘I think that no one will feel surprised that neither I, nor apparently any other naturalist,had heard of Mr Matthew’s views…’

                                                         (Charles Darwin 1860a)

(Narration)

‘I notice in your Number of April 21 Mr. Darwin’s letter honourably acknowledging my prior claim relative to the origin of species. I have not the least doubt that, in publishing his late work, he believed he was the first discoverer of this law of Nature. He is however wrong in thinking that no naturalist was aware of the previous discovery. I had occasion some 15 years ago to be conversing with a naturalist, a professor of a celebrated university, and he told me he had been reading my work “Naval Timber,” but that he could not bring such views before his class or uphold them publicly from fear of the cutty-stool, a sort of pillory punishment, not in the market-place and not devised for this offence, but generally practised a little more than half a century ago. It was at least in part this spirit of resistance to scientific doctrine that caused my work to be voted unfit for the public library of the fair city itself. The age was not ripe for such ideas, nor do I believe is the present one,..’

                                                                     (Patrick Matthew 1860a, p.433).

(Narration)

‘…an obscure writer on Forest Trees, in 1830, in Scotland, most expressly & clearly anticipated my views — though he put the case so briefly, that no single person ever noticed the scattered passages in his book…’

(Charles Darwin 1861a)

‘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.’

                                                  (Charles Darwin, 1861, p.xv)

(Narration)

"...on what is termed Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection, but which theory was published by me about thirty years before Darwin (honourably acknowledged in his last edition by Darwin) at a time when man was scarcely ready for such thoughts, I surely had the best right to be heard upon this subject. Yet others were allowed to speak upon it, and its parent denied to do so. Such is the conduct of a Society terming itself the British Association for the Advancement of Science."

                                Matthew (1867) the Dundee Advertiser . September 12.