EDWARD BLYTH-DISCOVERER OF NATURAL SELECTION BEFORE DARWIN!

The following essay on Edward Blyth is taken with permission from The Darwin Papers by James M Foard. 

Blyth wrote up Natural Selection in a major science publication of the day 23 years before Darwin published ‘Origin of Species’. This scholarly study by Mr Foard shows clearly that Charles Darwin ‘borrowed’ (to put it kindly) the idea of Natural Selection from Blyth. This debt was never properly acknowledged by Darwin. Blyth died in poverty, unrecognised by men.

It is noteworthy that Blyth was a Christian creationist, and argued that Variation within species and Natural Selection was a mechanism put in place by a beneficent Creator in order to allow animals to survive by adapting to changing and adverse environments. Variation within limits can be directly observed and is no challenge to the Bible. I have put this up in full and unabridged, it is quite a lengthy essay as it sets out to prove something controversial with carefully weighed evidence. I hope that readers will take the trouble to read it all. 

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“One forgotten chapter in history, neglected by most of Darwin’s biographers, concerns a gentleman by the name of Edward Blyth. Blyth was a chemist in South London, a year younger than Darwin, but unlike Charles Darwin, Edward Blyth had not been born into wealth. His father died when he was ten, leaving his widowed mother to raise four children. She managed to send her eldest son, Edward, to school where he excelled in chemistry and natural history, spending his every spare moment at the British Museum.

His sister said of him, “Never was any youth more industrious; up at three or four in the morning, reading, making notes, sketching bones, coloring maps, stuffing birds by the hundred, collecting butterflies, and beetles-teaching himself German sufficiently to translate it readily, singing always merrily at intervals.”(2)

Blyth spoke often at scientific meetings in London in the same circles that Darwin frequented, expounding theories quite similar to Darwin’s own later writings. From 1835 through 1837 he published some articles dealing with the subject of natural selection in The British Magazine of Natural History, and it is evident that Darwin received copies of this magazine while in Peru in 1835 during his voyage on the Beagle. (3)

Loren Eisely has shown in Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X. that not only was it obvious that Darwin had been quite familiar with Blyth’s writings but that Darwin was to use many of Blyth’s ideas years later on when writing his Origin, yet he had given Blyth little or no acknowledgment. (For more on Eisely, see note) (4)

Eisely makes mention of the fact that all of Darwin’s major ideas-the struggle for survival, variation, and natural selection- were fully expressed in Blyth’s first paper of 1835, yet Darwin was strangely reluctant to give Blyth any credit at all for this (5)

Here is an example of Blyth’s description of natural selection, which, as opposed to Darwin’s (and other evolutionist’s writings), describes it as a process whereby the original created type of a species has the best chance of surviving among brute animals:

” There has been, strangely enough, a difference of opinion among naturalists, as to whether these seasonal changes of colour were intended by Providence as an adaptation to change of temperature¹⁰, or as a means of preserving the various species from the observation of their foes, by adapting their hues to the colour of the surface; against which latter opinion it has been plausibly enough argued, that “nature provides for the preyer as well as for the prey.” The fact is, they answer bothpurposes; and they are among those striking instances of design, which so clearly and forcibly attest the existence of an omniscient great First Cause. Experiment demonstrates the soundness of the first opinion; and sufficient proof can be adduced to show that the other is also sound. Some arctic species are white, which have no enemy to fear, as the polar bear, the gyrfalcon, the arctic eagle-owl, the snowy owl, and even the stoat; and therefore, in these, the whiteness can only be to preserve the temperature of their bodies [VI. 79.]; but when we perceive that the colour of nocturnal animals, and of those defenceless species whose habits lead them to be much exposed, especially to enemies from above, are invariably of the same colour with their respective natural haunts, we can only presume that this is because they should not appear too conspicuous to their enemies.”.

Blyth, Magazine of Natural History, 1835

Francis Hitching mentioned that Eiseley had chronicled quite substantial portions of Darwin’s writings that were nearly “word for word identical between Darwin and Blyth”

” although Blyth’s ideas preceded Darwin’s publication of The Origin by over twenty years (I do not necessarily agree with Eiseley on the strict word for word comparison, however compare this from the Magazine of Natural History in 1835, which Darwin read on the Beagle, with Darwin’s earlier chapters on natural selection in his Origin) .(9)

Large parts of Darwin’s personal notes during this period in 1835 reflected his familiarity with Blyth’s writings, yet for some mysterious reason fifty pages of Darwin’s notebook from this time are missing, with the cryptic reference “All useful pages cut out,” ⁽⁶⁾ added by Darwin in 1856.

This does not prove that Darwin purposely hid reference to Blyth’s writings. You can draw your own conclusions.

Darwin’s own copy of Magazine of Natural History in 1837 showed that he made use of Blyth’s paper of that year, the same year when he first claimed to have come up with the idea of natural selection on his own,(7)wherein Blyth had written essentially the same basic doctrine that Darwin took credit for.(8)

Eiseley wrote, “At that moment, probably in 1837, the Origin was born.”

William Wells had actually written of natural selection in 1813 (as had many others, however it was Blyth’s writing that Darwin clearly was impressed by during his voyage, and it was Blyth who saw natural selection in a creationist context) but Darwin claimed that he was unfamiliar with Well’s writings at the time of the original publication of The Origin of Species.

Later on, after being brought to task by certain individuals for taking credit for an idea that was not his own, Darwin gave Wells credit for the idea; however Wells originated nothing novel either: as noted, the basic concept of natural selection had been around since ancient Greek time. (Although it is a bit like pulling teeth, evolutionists are finally having to admit that there was really nothing original in what Darwin wrote, however they still insist that he somehow proved evolution. Very few of them can actually cite evidence for this. For more on this century old fable, see Chapter Four of The Darwin Papers)

The significant difference between the writings of Charles Darwin and Edward Blyth was that Blyth was an ardent creationist; (other evolutionists had written of natural selection before Blyth, it’s really a pretty simple concept and was nothing new when Darwin wrote about it either, as can be seen from this website), the uniqueness of Blyth’s writing was that he saw natural selection within a creationist perspective, not from a purely naturalistic one, and his papers simply flowed with his sense of awe and reverence for the God of creation who had so wondrously and wisely made all of His creatures. Blyth showed that natural selection actually worked better within a creationist framework. Thus, with this major pillar destroyed, the theory of evolution didn’t have a leg to stand on, except for the ongoing propaganda campaign conducted by those such as Roland that lends the momentum to continue the charade.

Francis Hitching, an evolutionist, wrote: “Darwin took everything Blyth had said and used it to support an opposite conclusion”(10) i.e. the denial of the miraculous and of special creation. Darwin changed natural selection around to mean evolutionary descent of all beings from a common ancestor, which was never Blyth’s original contention at all.

Janet Browne wrote of Darwin: “There was a sliver of ice inside enabling him to make the most of all the advantages he possessed and the circumstances in which he found himself.” (Janet Browne is a noted historian. According to one critic of this chapter she must have loathed Darwin, or is it only creationists that loathe him when they speak critically of him? (11) Alfred Russel Wallace was a college of Darwin’s who, prior to Darwin’s presentation of his paper before a group of scientists shortly before the publication of the Origin, had written a nearly identical paper on evolution, at least in substance. After Darwin read Wallace’s paper he hurriedly published his own and read his paper first. Years later, Wallace refused to go to Darwin’s funeral)

Samuel Butler was a contemporary of Darwin and was the grandson of Darwin’s old headmaster at Shrewsbury. He had been a former admirer of him until he read the work of earlier evolutionists like Lamarck and Buffon, then he launched an attack on Darwin’s early claim to having originated his theories on his own, first in a book titled Evolution Old and New published in May of 1879, then in a letter to the Athenaeum on the 31st of January, 1880. Later he renewed the attack in another book titled Unconscious Memory, in which he documented Darwin’s “borrowing” much of his work from others. (There are legitimate axes to grind, and Butler definitely had one. Blyth was relatively unknown, died in obscurity and poverty, and his theories were from an entirely different outlook, creationism, not evolution, thus Butler had no ax to grind with Blyth).

World famous geneticist and anthropologist C.D. Darlington, an evolutionist (I have put his credentials here because his qualifications definitely carry weight, and should counter the tired evolutionist argument that no serious scientists question Darwin), although he doesn’t come right out and say it, still comes about as close as one could get to accusing Darwin of plagiarism without actually spelling it out. He said that Darwin “was able to put across his ideas not so much because of his scientific integrity, but because of his opportunism, his equivocation and his lack of historical sense. Though his admirers will not like to believe it, he accomplished his revolution by personal weakness and strategic talent more than by scientific virtue” (Did Darlington, a noted evolutionist, have “an ax to grind” with Darwin? Apparently so, and a legitimate one.) (16)

Blyth was eventually appointed as the curator of the Museum of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, in India, where he lived for many years on a meagre stipend. His personal life was marred with tragedy. In 1854 he married a Mrs. Hodges, a young widow visiting relatives in India, whom he had known previously in England when she had been single. She was to die within the space of three years after their wedding.

Arthur Grote, Blyth’s friend and colleague, wrote “In December 1857, Blyth had the misfortune to lose his wife. His short married life had been of the happiest, and the blow fell heavily on him. His letters to his sister for the early months of 1858 are painful to read. The shock proved too much for him, and brought on a serious attack of illness . . .(17)

A few years after the death of Blyth’s wife, when Darwin was famous and wealthy from the publication of his Origin and from his family inheritance while Blyth was living in obscurity and poverty, Darwin casually mentioned Blyth’s situation in a letter to his friend Lyell in 1860: “I have had a letter from poor Blyth of Calcutta, who is much disappointed at hearing Lord Canning will not grant any money . . .” and then he made this remarkable admission “. . . Blyth says (and he is in many respects a very good judge) that his ideas on species are quite revolutionary.. .”(18)

Blyth never fully recovered from the loss of his wife. He remained in poor health for the rest of his days. Blyth was incapable of any harsh feelings, even towards Darwin, with whom he corresponded. He was remembered by his contemporaries as having a prodigious memory, and his friend Grote wrote eloquently of him in a eulogy: “The warmth and freshness of his feelings which first inspired him with the love of nature clung to him through his chequered life, and kept him on good terms with the world, which punished him . . . Few men who have written so much have left in their writings so little that is bitter. No man that I have ever known was so free as he was from the spirit of intolerance; and the absence of this is a marked feature in all his controversial papers. All too that he knew was at the service of everybody . . .” (19)

Loren Eisely wrote: “But let the world not forget that Edward Blyth, a man of poverty and bad fortune, shaped a key that dropped half-used from his hands when he set forth hastily on his own ill-fated voyage. That key, which was picked up and reforged by a far greater and more cunning hand, was no less than natural selection.”(20)

When Blyth died in London on December 27, 1873, found among his papers was a fragment of an old manuscript that he had once been preparing, titled “On the Origination of Species”. (21)

Natural selection is the main process that Darwin said accounted for his theory of evolution to work. As can be seen from Darwin’s own writing, the presence of transitional forms providing proof for his theory are extremely rare, practically non-existent, because the law of natural selection would tend to exterminate them. 
How did Darwin say that this process of natural selection takes place? Let all of those who are concerned with protecting endangered species and animal rights pay attention to this, straight from the pen of Charles Darwin, where he expounds on his idea of the process by which natural selection takes place: 
” I endeavoured, also, to show that intermediate varieties, from existing in lesser numbers than the forms which they connect, will generally be beaten out and exterminated during the course of further modification and improvement.” (Origin, Chapter Ten: On the Imperfection of the Geologic Record: On the absence of intermediate varieties at the present day)

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That was Darwin’s reason why those bothersome missing links weren’t found to support his theory 
(The Darwin Papers; Chapter’s 4 – 6), and this was his sentence on other forms of life that aren’t fit enough to compete with other species in his struggle for survival; they get wiped out, and Darwin considered this an “improvement.”

This should come as no surprise from a man whose favorite pastime during his college years was shooting birds at random, and who went on a bloody spree clubbing birds to death during his voyage on the Beagle 
(See Chapter 1).

He further wrote in his Origin: “As natural selection acts solely by the preservation of profitable modifications, each new form will tend in a fully-stocked country to take the place of, and finally exterminate, its own less improved parent-form and other less favoured forms with which it comes into competition. Thus extinction and natural selection go hand in hand.” (Origin, Chapter Vl, On the Absences or Rarity of Transitional Varieties, pp.80, Benton Edition, 1952).

Thus we have Darwin’s sentence on the baby harp seals, the blue whale, African rhino and the mountain gorilla: they will all get beaten into extinction during the course of “further modification and improvement.”

Darwin summed up his viewpoint on natural selection in the final part of the eighth chapter of his Origin of Species, where he wrote: “. . . To my imagination it is far more satisfactory to look at such instincts as the young cuckoo ejecting it’s foster brothers (from the nest),-ants making slaves-the larvae of ichneumonide feeding with the live bodies of the caterpillars,-not as especially endowed or created instincts, but as one general law leading to the advancement of all organic beings [mankind included],-namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.” (Origin, final paragraph of Chapter Eight on Instinct, 6th edition)

We find Darwin’s outlook on his role as a naturalist and what he thought of the delicate balance of nature when he wrote in 1856, upon beginning his Origin: “What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horridly cruel works of nature.” (25)

In contrast to Darwin’s gray, dreary, brutal vision of the natural world (read the four previous quotes above) we find Edward Blyth’s observations of the cooperation of many species inhabiting a similar ecosystem. A comparison of Darwin’s and Blythe’s writings will show that Blyth did not see natural selection as having the capacity to originate any species, it could only preserve and protect the integrity of already existing species, thus Blyth was correctly in line with what modern scholarship has to say about it.

Natural selection is merely a sorting process. It is like a shaker tray on a treadmill in a food processing plant that sorts out various peanuts by size and lets the smaller ones drop through the holes while the larger ones are passed on for consumption. The shaker tray did not create the peanuts, which were grown from other peanuts, it merely selected and separated the peanuts by size.

According to Darwin though, and his coterie of evolutionist followers, you could take certain peanuts that have novel features, such as a larger peanut, and plant it, and then select the largest peanut from that bunch and plant that, and eventually have a really, really big peanut with more survival value, say a 50 lb. peanut, or a 500 lb. peanut. Or you could grow a smarter, faster peanut, or a peanut that might start to sprout wings, or a peanut that might decide to return to the sea like they claim whales did, or it could develop some other ingenious feature that would help it survive, until finally you would have an entirely new species that wouldn’t be a peanut at all. After all, that is how they claim we all arrived here from some type of primitive bacteria. This is all nonsense of course, we have bred animals to certain sizes, along with plants, and there have always been certain limits to the amount of variation that can be produced through selective breeding.

It was Blyth who articulated and developed natural selection within a creationist context and who showed that the original kind within a species had a much better chance of survival than the more exotic varieties did (this is an overall generalisation; through variation and migration certain breeds began to inhabit different locales that were more favorable for them, such as polar bears in the arctic, but as noted with the peanut, variety has it’s limits), and it is Blyth from whom Darwin took his major ideas from and then turned them around to deny the special, miraculous creation of species by God. We find from Blyth’s writings that he was also an early ecologist and conservationist, evidently concerned for the welfare of our ecosystem and man’s role in preserving it. He expressed these sentiments well over one hundred years before the birth of the modern ecology movement when he wrote of “. . . the system which the existence of one species is necessary to that of another, and which binds each race to it’s locality; where the presence of each is alike necessary to preserve the equilibrium of organic being around.” (26)

Also in stark contrast to Darwin’s view of the “clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low . . . works of nature”, Blyth 
wrote: “How beautifully do we thus perceive, as in a thousand other instances the balance of nature preserved” (27)

In his vanity (man) is apt to imagine that all were made for him . . . yet how ardently does he labor to exterminate every portion of that creation . . .” ⁽²⁸⁾

There were four important distinctions that we should look at between Darwin’s writings and Edward Blyth’s.

1. First of all, Blyth did not believe in evolution, he did not believe that all life descended from a common ancestor, but he believed in separately created kinds, as spoken of in the book of Genesis from which all variations among species were derived from. He wrote: “What is a species? What constitutes specific distinction? To which the only rational reply appears to be (and even this is quite incapable of probation) beings derived from a separate origin.”⁽²⁹⁾
2. Secondly, Blyth also saw (and quite correctly) in natural selection not an originating principle but a conserving factor in operation designed to preserve the integrity of a species: ⁽³⁰⁾ “It is worthy of remark, however that the original and typical form of an animal is in great measure kept up by the same identical means by which a true breed is produced. The original form of a species is unquestionably better adapted to it’s natural habits than any modification of that form . . . the latter in a state of nature, is allowed but few opportunities of continuing it’s race . . . The same law, therefore, which was intended by Providence to keep up the typical qualities of a species, can be easily converted by man into a means of raising different varieties, but it is also clear that, if man did not keep up these breeds by regulating their sexual intercourse, they would all naturally soon revert to the original type.”

Blyth also touched on the subject of comparative anatomy of creatures with outwardly similar morphology (ex. Men and apes): “I must venture, however, to differ from the majority of them [evolutionary minded naturalists] in opposing the prevalent notion, that the extreme modifications of diverse types blend and inosculate by direct affinity [common evolutionary descent]; contending however closely these may apparently resemble, the most similar modifications of diverse types are not, in a physiological sense, more nearly related to each other than are the more characteristic examples of the same.”⁽³¹⁾ He wrote in another section: “. . . every species is essentially distinct and separate from every other species; otherwise it would not be a species but a variety. The most similar species, therefore, are only allied to each other in consequence of the resemblence of their general organization.” (32)

Thus, men and apes simply resemble each other, that does not in itself prove any type of common descent.

As far as certain DNA similarities, humans have more in common genetically with chickens than we do with rats, a mammal to whom we are supposedly more related to in evolutionary terms. (Humans are genetically more similar to chickens than rats; Wageningen International Studies Paper; Whisp’r Archive, Issue 31 – 26.10.2000 Page 05)

Some marsupials are remarkably similar to certain Eutheriatic (non-pouched) mammals, in fact they resemble some Eutheriatic mammals more than other Eutheriatic mammals resemble each other, however their method of weaning their young clearly sets them apart as another order of living beings entirely.

• Thirdly, Blyth clearly saw the wise hand of God involved in natural law: “Then, and with humble reverence, let the mighty acts of Supreme Omnipotence be spoken of, it may be that the eternal and ever glorious Being which willed matter into existence shall pronounce on it the final doom of annihilation . . . Or, what is more probable, to judge from the universal benevolence of all that is within our grasp, it’s elements shall again be called forth into light and life, and blaze forth the recommencement of the same system.” ⁽³³⁾
• Fourthly, Blyth saw man as a creation by God distinct and unique from the rest of the animal world and from all creation: “A new era commenced with the introduction of man upon the world; a secondary intelligence was permitted to assume dominion over matter.” ⁽³⁴⁾

He wrote in another treatise:

“The same awful (awesome) Being who first awakened man into existence in common with the meanest atom, who appointed his destiny upon earth to be so diverse from that of his other creatures, who endowed him alone to reflect upon his Makers goodness and power . . .” (35)

These are some of the very important differences between Blyth’s majestic vision of God’s beautiful creation and of man’s role to play in it contrasted with Darwin’s evolutionary theories of some furtive creature struggling to survive by eliminating his competitors as they ascend out of primordial slime.

Let us see whether Darwin’s ideas of chance evolution or Blyth’s ideas of an intelligent designer make more sense in light of some observations of nature. Darwin did say that his theory would be totally discredited if a trait could be shown not to have arisen by gradual evolutionary processes: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”(36)

The pig shark, so named because it has a nose and mouth section remarkably resembling a pigs, does something quite unique among any creature of the animal Kingdom, there is no evidence of anything like it at all in any other animal, fossilized or modern. It’s eggs are shaped like perfectly formed auger-like screws, precision fitted as though from a tool-makers machine shop, and then it drills these egg capsules into rock crevices, where the embryo develops safe and secure from predators for the space of a year!

Nothing like it exists at all in any other species of shark, there is no evidence of evolution having produced this marvel, it speaks for design from a creative intelligence, not blind chance and random chemicals mixing together.⁽³⁷⁾

In a comparative study of the hearts of the four types of living reptiles; lizards, snakes, turtles, and crocodiles, we find that there are major structural differences between them all, with no indication of any type of an intermediate form ever existing, in fact, an intermediate form between a crocodile’s heart and that of any other reptile would undoubtedly spell instant death to the creature.

In lizards, snakes, and turtles we have the right atrium and the left atrium situated next to each other, on the same side of the heart, to the left of the two aorta, while the pulmonary artery is on the right side of the heart. The crocodile’s heart, on the other hand, is not anything like this at all. His right atrium and left atrium are on opposite sides of the heart: the right atrium is placed where the pulmonary artery is in the other reptiles, while the pulmonary artery and two aorta are situated in between the two atria.

Among the three remaining types of reptiles, a lizards heart has both aortas and both atria connected to the left ventricle, while in a turtles heart only the right aorta and the two atria are connected the left ventricle, the left aorta is connected to the right ventricle. In a snakes heart only the left atrium opens into the left ventricle, both of the aortas and the right atrium open into the right ventricle. None of these creatures could have survived unless their hearts were perfectly formed as they are from the beginning of their existence, an intermediate form would spell instant doom for an animal, and yet none of these reptiles have hearts that are alike in the slightest.

The amphibian has a heart unlike that of any reptilian heart. Instead of a four chambered heart like that found in reptiles, with an amphibian’s heart there are only two atria that pass into a single ventricle, and a fish only has one atrium and one ventricle connected to the gills. There is definitely a progression in complexity from the heart of the fish to the reptile, but there is nothing like an intermediate stage to be found, an intermediate stage would be fatal for any creature. A heart must be completely functional and fully developed for the creature to survive.’

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The above passage is taken without alteration other than 4 minor spelling corrections from The Darwin Papers web site and is the intellectual property of James M Foard.