Patrick Matthew (20 October 1790 – 8 June 1874) was a Scottish grain merchant, fruit farmer, forester, and landowner, who contributed to the understanding of horticulture, silviculture, and agriculture in general, with a focus on maintaining the British navy and feeding new colonies. He published the basic concept of natural selection as a mechanism in evolutionary adaptation and speciation (directional selection) and species constancy or stasis (stabilizing selection) in 1831 in a book called Naval Timber and Arboriculture in which he uses the phrase "the natural process of selection". He did not further publicly develop his ideas until after Darwin and Wallace published their theories of evolution by natural selection in 1859. It has been suggested that Darwin and/or Wallace had encountered Matthew's earlier work, but there is no evidence of this. After the publication of On the Origin of Species, Darwin became aware of Matthew's 1831 book and subsequent editions of The Origin include an acknowledgment that Matthew "gives precisely the same view on the origin of species as that" given in the "present volume".
Biography
Patrick Matthew was born 20 October 1790 at Rome, a farm held by his father John Matthew near Scone Palace, in Perthshire. His mother was Agnes Duncan, a relative of Adam Duncan, 1st Viscount Duncan.Melville L. (1939) The fair land of Gowrie, William Culross & Son, Coupar Angus. Reprints 1975, 1984 In 1807, Matthew inherited Gourdiehill from Adam Duncan.
Matthew was educated at Perth Academy and the University of Edinburgh, but did not graduate due to the death of his father. Matthew had to take over the responsibilities of managing and running the affairs of a property estate at Gourdiehill. Over the years he successfully nurtured, cultivated, and transformed much of the estate's farmland and pastures into several large orchards of apple and pear trees, numbering over 10,000. During this time, Matthew became an avid researcher of both silviculture and horticulture. His research and experience at the modest estate framed a strong base of reference to form his own opinions and theories.Calman, WT (1912) "Patrick Matthew of Gourdiehill, Naturalist", Handbook and Guide to Dundee and District, AW Paton and AH Millar (Eds), the British Association for the Advancement of Science, pp. 451-7 (see The Patrick Matthew Project » More On Matthew
Matthew periodically traveled to Europe between 1807 and 1831 either on business or for his scientific studies. A trip to Paris in 1815 had to be cut short when Napoleon returned from Elba. Between 1840 and 1850, Matthew traveled extensively in what is now northern Germany. Recognizing the commercial potential of Hamburg, he bought two farms in Schleswig-Holstein.
Matthew married his maternal first cousin, Christian Nicol in 1817, and they had eight children: John (born 1818), Robert (1820), Alexander (1821), Charles (1824), Euphemia (1826), Agnes (1828), James Edward (1830), and Helen Amelia (1833). Robert farmed Gourdiehill in Patrick's old age, Alexander took over the German interests; the other three sons emigrated, initially to the United States. Matthew became interested in the colonization of New Zealand and was instrumental in setting up a "Scottish New Zealand Land Company". At his urging, James and Charles Matthew emigrated to New Zealand, where they set up one of the earliest commercial orchards in Australasia using seed and seedlings from Gourdiehill.Dempster W.J. 1983. Patrick Matthew and natural selection: nineteenth century gentleman-farmer, naturalist and writer. Harris. Edinburgh. with corrections/additions from review of Dempster By G J Tee in John Matthew remained in America, sending botanical tree specimens back to his father; these included the first seedlings known to have been planted in Europe of both the Giant Redwood and the Coastal Redwood. A group of trees of these species still thriving near Inchture in Perthshire comes from these seedlings. Matthew gave many more seedlings to friends, relatives and neighbors, and redwoods can be found throughout the Carse of Gowrie; these as well as some elsewhere in Scotland (e.g. at Gillies Hill near Stirling Castle) are thought to have been grown from the seedlings. His reputation as a local celebrity faded in the twentieth century, when he was remembered as a "character" who at the end of his life became convinced that "someone very dear to his heart" had become a bird, and "that was the rizzen he wouldna allow the blackies to be shot in his orchard for fear they would shute her, ye ken, although the blackies were sair on the fruit".
Matthew's house, Gourdiehill, fell into disrepair in the 1970s and 1980s, and was demolished in 1990 when the grounds became a small housing estate; some of the salvaged stone was incorporated in a rock garden.Sommerville C. (2020) Stone from home. The Garden (RHS) [May 2020], volume 145 part 5, pp.97-100.
Work
In managing his orchards, Patrick Matthew became familiar with the problems related to the principles of husbandry in horticulture for food production (and hence, by extension silviculture). In 1831, Matthew published On Naval Timber and Arboriculture to mixed reception.Anonymous. Matthew on Naval Timber and Arboriculture. Evans and Ruffy's Farmers' Journal and Agricultural Advertizer, Vol 24 (1831), No. 1218 (Mon 17 January), /Anon. (1831) Literary Criticism. Edinburgh Literary Journal, or Weekly Register of Criticism and Belles Lettres, Vol 6 (Jul-Dec), No. 138 (Sat 2 July), pp.1-4 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044092648450;view=1up;seq=7Anon. "Article VI: Dry Rot – Mr. Kyan's Patent". Quarterly Review, Vol 49 (1833), pp.125-135 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015074711410;view=1up;seq=139 Notably, the book contains an addendum that discusses natural selection 28 years before Charles Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species.
Charles Darwin and natural selection In 1860, Matthew read in the Gardeners' Chronicle for 3 March a review (by Huxley[T. H. Huxley] (26 December 1859) Darwin on the origin of species, The Times, pp. 8–9), republished from The Times, of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which said Darwin "professes to have discovered the existence and the modus operandi of natural selection, and described its principles". A letter by Matthew, published in the Gardeners' Chronicle on 7 April 1860, said that this was what he had "published very fully and brought to apply practically to forestry" in Naval Timber and Arboriculture in 1831, as publicised in reviews. He quoted extracts from his book, firstly the opening words of Note B from pages 364–365 of the Appendix, stopping before his discussion of hereditary nobility and entail.Matthew, P. 1860. Nature's law of selection. Gardeners' Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette (7 April): 312-13
He then quoted in its entirety a section from pages 381 to 388 of the Appendix. This lacked a heading, but in the Contents appeared as "Accommodation of organized life to circumstance, by diverging ramifications". In it, he commented on the difficulty of distinguishing "between species and variety". The change of the fossil record between geological eras implied living organisms having "a power of change, under a change of circumstances", in the same way as the "derangements and changes in organised existence, induced by a change of circumstance from the interference of man" gave "proof of the plastic quality of superior life" which he called "a circumstance-suiting power". Following past deluges, "an unoccupied field would be formed for new diverging ramifications of life" in "the course of time, moulding and accommodating their being anew to the change of circumstances". He proposed that "the progeny of the same parents, under great difference of circumstance, might, in several generations, even become distinct species, incapable of co-reproduction."
He described this as a "circumstance-adaptive law, operating upon the slight but continued natural disposition to sport in the progeny". Matthew then quoted the opening three paragraphs from Part III of his book, Miscellaneous Matter Connected with Naval Timber: Nurseries, pages 106 to 108, on "the luxuriance and size of timber depending upon the particular variety of the species" and the need to select seed from the best individuals when growing trees.
On reading this, Darwin commented in a letter to Charles Lyell dated 10 April:
Darwin then wrote a letter of his own to the Gardener's Chronicle, stating,
As promised, Darwin included a statement in the third (1861) and subsequent editions of On the Origin of Species, acknowledging that Matthew had anticipated "precisely the same view on the origin of species" and "clearly saw...the full force of the principle of natural selection". The statement referred to the correspondence, and quoted from a response by Matthew published in the Gardener's Chronicle. Darwin wrote that.
In June 1864, after visiting his son who was farming in Schleswig-Holstein, Matthew wrote to Darwin about his pamphlet publishing five of his letters.Darwin, C. R. to Matthew, Patrick, 6 June 1864, Darwin Correspondence Project, "Letter no. 4522," accessed on 19 February 2023, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-4522.xml The title page of this political pamphlet by Matthew stated his claim to be "solver of the problem of species". In a letter to Hooker (22 and 28 October 1865), Darwin commented that William Charles Wells, in an essay "read in 1813 to Royal Soc. but not printed", had applied "most distinctly the principle of N. Selection to the races of man.— So poor old Patrick Matthew, is not the first, & he cannot or ought not any longer put on his Title pages 'Discoverer of the principle of Natural Selection'!."Darwin, C. R. to J. D. Hooker 22 and 28 [October 1865] Darwin Correspondence Project, "Letter no. 4921," accessed on 2017-05-29, http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/DCP-LETT-4921
Matthew's legacy in evolutionary studies Matthew, Darwin and Wallace are the only three people considered to have independently discovered the principle of natural selection as a mechanism for speciation (macroevolution). Others prior to Matthew had proposed natural selection as a mechanism for the generation of varieties or races within a species: James Hutton suggested the mechanism in 1794 as leading to improvement of varieties, and an 1813 paper by William Charles Wells proposed that it would form new varieties.
Modern claims for Matthew's priority Although Darwin insisted he had been unaware of Matthew's work, some modern commentators have held that he and Wallace were likely to have known of it, or could have been influenced indirectly by other naturalists who read and cited Matthew's book. Ronald W. Clark, in his 1984 biography of Darwin, commented that Only the transparent honesty of Darwin's character... makes it possible to believe that by the 1850s he had no recollection of Matthew's work.Clark, Ronald W. 1984. The survival of Charles Darwin. p130-131 This begs the question, for it assumes he did read Matthew's book. Clark continues by suggesting: If Darwin had any previous knowledge of Arboriculture, it had slipped down into the unconscious.Clark, Survival of Charles Darwin, p131If Darwin had read the book, it might have been an example of cryptomnesia.