What the Bible Says

1
What the Bible Says Genesis 111-12 And God s
aid, 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 fort
h 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 ea
rth 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 th
e 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 con
cept 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 ant
ithetical to the concept of evolution.
5
Aristotle and the Scala Naturae
Aristotle (384 322 B.C.E.) did believe in real
ity, 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
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Scala Naturae The Great Chain of Being Christi
anity 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 lo
wer 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 d
ust, 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 kin
g 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 wa
s 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 per
fect, 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?

11
The Species Question Are sugar maples and red m
aples 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 botani
sts 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 gro
ups 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 spe
cies 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 n
atural 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 t
wo 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 fa
ct 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 Vall
ey 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 (174
4 1829) Georges Cuvier (1769 1832)
18
John Ray (1627 1705) English naturalist real
ly the father of English natural history.
Published important works on plants, animals, and
natural theology. Taught for a time at Trinity Co
llege, 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 (167
0) 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., 1
686, 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 nomen
clature for organisms (e.g., Homo sapiens,
Taraxacum officinale).
22
Linnaeus 1743 created the modern Celsius temp
erature 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 Arthropoda
Subphylum HexapodaClass InsectaSubclass
PterygotaInfraclass NeopteraSuperorder
EndopterygotaOrder HymenopteraSuborder
ApocritaInfraorder AculeataSuperfamily
ApoideaFamily CrabronidaeSubfamily
BembicinaeTribe GorytiniGenus Sphecius
(Dahlbom, 1844) Species some 20 species descri
bed
28
Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon (1701 1
788) French mathematician, biologist, cosmologist
, naturalist. Keeper of the Jardin du Roi (now Ja
rdin des Plantes) in Paris. Author of the incredi
ble Histoire naturelle (44 volumes), translated
into many languages.
29
Buffon Early in his career, he did important wo
rk 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 part
iculière 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 greenho
use 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 B
uffon. 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
  

33

• 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 in
telligent 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 b
y his father to go into law, but was not
successful, became depressed, and committed
suicide. Robert Waring Darwin (1766 1848) pus
hed 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 d
o 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 hav
e 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-generated variation and diversificat
ion led to all modern plants and animals,
including humans No original creation or divine i
ntervention 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 develo
pment 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 wate
ry 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 seve
ral years until injured, after which he took up
the study of medicine. Made important contribut
ions to cell theory, botany, invertebrate
zoology, and evolutionary theory.
Became a member of the French Academy of Science
s 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 devel
oped 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 Lin
fluence des circonstances (The influence of the
environment), becoming adapted to their local
environment.
42
Lamarcks Great Escalator of Being
Originally an essentialist, Lamarck became convi
nced that molluscs changed (transmutation) over
time. Instead of a great ladder of being, Lamar
ck 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
Lamarck believed that the use and disuse of char
acters powered adaptation In every animal whi
ch 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 ch
aracters 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 attac
ked 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 po
int 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 th
e 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.
48
Cuviers Ideas Cuviers work paved the way for
the theory of evolution, but he himself did not
believe in evolution. He believed that all pres
ent 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 pre
viously existing organisms that had become
extinct through some great catastrophe.
49
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) Pa
trick Mathew (1790 1864) Edward Blyth (1810 1
873)
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 t
he idea of natural selection.
51
Key quotation from Wells What was done for ani
mals 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 Tim
ber 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.
53
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 giv
en in the Appendix to his book, which attracted
no attention, although it is also mentioned in
the main text. Matthew claimed, and Darwin agree
d, 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 origi
nally 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 w
as 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.