The letters between James Lamont and Charles Darwin on Arctic fauna

Polar Record ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
pp. 492-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Leah Devlin
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Polar Bear ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Linnean Society ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
Natural Means ◽  
Arctic Fauna

ABSTRACTIn the summers of 1858 and 1859, the Scot Sir James Lamont of Knockdow embarked on two cruises to Svalbard (referred to by Lamont as Spitzbergen [sic]) to hunt, make geographical surveys, and collect geological and biological specimens. Lamont's return from these voyages coincided with the publication of the joint Charles Darwin-Alfred Russel Wallace paper, ‘On the tendency of species to form varieties; on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection’ by the Linnean Society in August 1858 and, a year later, the publication of Darwin's On the origin of species (Darwin 1958). Profoundly influenced by Darwin's ideas, Lamont initiated a correspondence with the naturalist, relating examples of what he considered to be natural selection, observed during his hunting expeditions. In his Svalbard travelogue, Seasons with the sea-horses (1861), Lamont expounded specifically upon walrus and polar bear evolution, ideas inspired by sporadic yet encouraging letters from the renowned naturalist.

Alfred Russel Wallace, F. R. S., and his essays of 1858 and 1855

1959 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-84 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Great Problem ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Critical Moment ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
Family Tradition ◽  
College Training ◽  
The Future

IN 1858 Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin jointly and independently stated the principle of natural selection, and in 1859 Darwin published the Origin of species. In this essay I want to discuss the part played by Alfred Wallace in that great event: was he no more than a catalyst for Darwin, applied at a critical moment of his career? I shall try to show how much more than that he was and, up to a point, how similarly they pursued their great problem. That is the more remarkable because it would be hard to choose men more unlike in character than these two. Charles Darwin came of well-to-do parentage with a strong family tradition both to support and to bind him. His dominant father moulded the future pattern of his life. He went through the school and college training of a young gentleman for whom it seemed difficult to find a satisfactory calling. But all his life he was a man of property, and continued so through his common sense and his financial sagacity.

The Darwin-Wallace Conversazione

1958 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-74
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Geological Society ◽  
Linnean Society ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
Natural Means

In July 1858 the celebrated paper ‘On the tendency of species to form varieties, and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection’, by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, was read at a meeting of the Linnean Society. To mark the centenary of this event, which coincided with the meeting in London of the XV International Zoological Congress, the Councils of the Royal Society, the Linnean Society and the Geological Society agreed to hold a special joint conversazione to honour the memory of these two great men of science. The conversazione was held on 15 July in the rooms of the three Societies. The guests, who included many delegates to the Zoological Congress and some of the descendents of Darwin and Wallace, were welcomed on arrival by the Presidents of the Royal Society (Sir Cyril Hinshelwood), the Linnean Society (Dr C. F. A. Pantin), the Geological Society (Dr C. J. Stubblefield) and the Zoological Congress (Sir Gavin de Beer).

‘Short-Spanned Living Creatures’: Evolutionary Perspectives in Rhoda Broughton’s Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Aaron Green
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Simple Structure ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Evolutionary Perspectives

Abstract In Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Charles Lyell appraised the distinct contribution made by his protégé, Charles Darwin (On the Origin of Species (1859)), to evolutionary theory: ‘Progression … is not a necessary accompaniment of variation and natural selection [… Darwin’s theory accounts] equally well for what is called degradation, or a retrogressive movement towards a simple structure’. In Rhoda Broughton’s first novel, Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867), written contemporaneously with Lyell’s book, the Crystal Palace at Sydenham prompts precisely this sort of Darwinian ambivalence to progress; but whether British civilization ‘advance[s] or retreat[s]’, her narrator adds that this prophesized state ‘will not be in our days’ – its realization exceeds the single lifespan. This article argues that Not Wisely, but Too Well is attentive to the irreconcilability of Darwinism to the Victorian ‘idea of progress’: Broughton’s novel, distinctly from its peers, raises the retrogressive and nihilistic potentials of Darwin’s theory and purposes them to reflect on the status of the individual in mid-century Britain.

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913): evolution and medicine

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 214-216
Author(s):  
Henry P O'Connell
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Community ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Linnean Society ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
Scientific World ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Evolution And Medicine

The theory we now know simply as ‘evolution’ was first presented to the scientific world one and a half centuries ago, on 1 July 1858, when the work of two men, Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Robert Darwin (1809–82), was jointly read at the Linnean Society. While Charles Darwin has rightly taken his place in history as one of the greatest scientists of all time, Alfred Russel Wallace has been largely forgotten outside of the scientific community. However, Wallace was a prolific researcher and writer with interests in a wide range of topics, from medicine to economics.

Evolution: A Very Short Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Charlesworth ◽  
Deborah Charlesworth
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Living Species ◽  
Evolution By Natural Selection ◽  
Special Creation

Less than 150 years ago, the view that living species were the result of special creation by God was still dominant. The recognition by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace of the mechanism of evolution by natural selection has completely transformed our understanding of the living world, including our own origins. Evolution: A Very Short Introduction provides a summary of the process of evolution by natural selection, highlighting the wide range of evidence, and explains how natural selection gives rise to adaptations and eventually, over many generations, to new species. It introduces the central concepts of the field of evolutionary biology and discusses some of the remaining questions regarding evolutionary processes.

The Loss of Rational Design

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 235-257
Author(s):  
Friedel Weinert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Rational Design ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
British Association ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Descent Of Man

Charles Darwin published hisOrigin of Specieson November 24, 1859. Whatever hurdle the theory of natural selection faced in its struggle for acceptance, its impact on human self-images was almost immediate. Well before Darwin had the chance of applying the principle of natural selection to human origins—in hisDescent of Man(1871)—his contemporaries quickly and rashly drew the inference to man's descent from the ape. Satirical magazines likePunchdelighted in depicting Darwin with his imposing head on an apish body. At the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (June 1860), Bishop Wilberforce asked T. H. Huxley triumphantly whether he traced his ancestry to the ape on his grandfather's or grandmother's side. A wave of evolutionary texts swept over Europe (L. Biichner, E. Haeckel, T. H. Huxley, J. B. Lamarck, C. Lyell, F. Rolle, E. Tyler and K. Vogt). Written in English, French and German, they all had a common focus: the place of humans in a Darwinian world, including religion and morality.

The Loss of Rational Design

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 20-21
Author(s):  
Friedel Weinert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Rational Design ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
British Association ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Descent Of Man

Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species on November 24, 1859. Whatever hurdle the theory of natural selection faced in its struggle for acceptance, its impact on human self-images was almost immediate. Well before Darwin had the chance of applying the principle of natural selection to human origins—in his Descent of Man (1871)—his contemporaries quickly and rashly drew the infer–ence to man’s descent from the ape. Satirical magazines like Punch delighted in depicting Darwin with his imposing head on an apish body. At the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (June 1860), Bishop Wilberforce asked T.

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