Review : Before Darwin

Presentation is everything. W. J. Dempster’s biography of Patrick Matthew, an
obscure Scottish arboriculturalist, Evolutionary Concepts in the Nineteenth
Century (The Pentland Press, £12.50, ISBN 1 85821 356 8) shows how true
this is. In 1831, when Charles Darwin had just set sail on the Beagle, Matthew
published a clear and accurate description of natural selection in a book
principally about tree growing. Dempster paints a picture of a man wronged, but
also of someone who was taciturn, pedantic and antisocial. The moral? If you
have a brilliant idea, sell it well.