In 1831, in the appendix to a book on the raising of trees for shipbuilding, Scottish grain merchant Patrick Matthew suggested that, over great expanses of time, “the progeny of the same parents, under great difference of circumstance, might, in several generations, even become distinct species, incapable of co-reproduction.” He’d struck on the central idea of natural selection nearly 30 years before On the Origin of Species: As the field of existence is limited and pre-occupied, it is ...
