From Chris Aspin
Derek Hough draws our attention to Patrick Matthew setting out the principles of evolution in 1831, before Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin (Letters, 6 August). Jalaluddin Rumi, the Persian Sufi teacher and poet who died in 1273, seems to have come close when he wrote: “I died from minerality and became vegetable / And from vegetativeness I died and became animal / I died from animality and became man.”
Helmshore, Lancashire, UK
