Edward Blyth.

Edward Blyth (December 23, 1810 - December 27, 1873) was an English zoologist and chemist. He is known as one of the founders of Indian zoology. Image File history File links Blyth_Edward_1810-1873. ... Image File history File links Blyth_Edward_1810-1873. ... December 23 is the 357th day of the year (358th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1810 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... December 27 is the 361st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (362nd in leap years). ... 1873 (MDCCCLXXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Motto (French) God and my right Anthem No official anthem - the United Kingdom anthem God Save the Queen is commonly used England() – on the European continent() – in the United Kingdom() Capital (and largest city) London (de facto) Official languages English (de facto) Unified  -  by Athelstan 927 AD  Area  -  Total 130... Zoology (rarely spelled zoölogy) is the biological discipline which involves the study of non-human animals. ...

Blyth was born in London in 1810. In 1841 he travelled to India to become the curator of the museum of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal. He set about updating the museum's catalogues, publishing a Catalogue of the Birds of the Asiatic Society in 1849. He was prevented from doing much fieldwork himself, but received and described bird specimens from Hume, Tickell, Swinhoe and others. He remained as curator until 1862, when ill health forced his return to England. His The Natural History of the Cranes was published in 1881. This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ... The Asiatic Society was founded by Sir William Jones (1746-1794) on 15 January 1784 in Calcutta, the capital of British India, to enhance and further the cause of Oriental research. ... Allan Octavian Hume (June 6, 1829 - July 31, 1912) son of Joseph Hume was a civil servant in British governed India, and a political reformer. ... Colonel Samuel Richard Tickell (August 19, 1811 - April 20, 1875) was an British army officer, artist and ornithologist in India and Burma. ... Robert Swinhoe (September 1, 1836 - October 28, 1877) was an English naturalist. ...

Species bearing his name include Blyth's Reed Warbler and Blyth's Pipit. Binomial name Acrocephalus dumetorum Blyth,, 1849 The Blyths Reed Warbler, Acrocephalus dumetorum, is an Old World warbler in the genus Acrocephalus. ... Binomial name Anthus godlewskii Taczanowski, 1876 The Blyths Pipit, Anthus godlewskii, is a medium-sized passerine bird which breeds in Mongolia and neighbouring areas. ...

Blyth's role in the development of Natural Selection

Edward Blyth accepted the principle that species could be modified over time, and his writings had a major influence on Charles Darwin. Blyth wrote three major articles on variation, discussing the effects of artificial selection and describing the process of natural selection as restoring organisms in the wild to their archetype (rather than forming new species). These articles were published in 'The Magazine of Natural History' between 1835 and 1837.^[1][2]). He was among the first to recognise the significance of Wallace's paper "On the Law Which has Regulated the Introduction of Species" and brought it to the notice of Darwin in a letter written in Calcutta on December 8, 1855: For other people of the same surname, and places and things named after Charles Darwin, see Darwin. ... This Chihuahua mix and Great Dane show the wide range of dog breed sizes created using artificial selection. ... Darwins illustrations of beak variation in the finches of the Galápagos Islands, which hold 13 closely related species that differ most markedly in the shape of their beaks. ... An archetype is a generic, idealized model of a person, object, or concept from which similar instances are derived, copied, patterned, or emulated. ... In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biodiversity. ... Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS (January 8, 1823 – November 7, 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. ... This article is on Calcutta/Kolkata, the city. ...

What think you of Wallace’s paper in the Ann. N. Hist.? Good! Upon the whole! Wallace has, I think, put the matter well; and according to his theory, the various domestic races of animals have been fairly developed into species. A trump of a fact for friend Wallace to have hit upon!^[3]

Darwin took little notice of the paper, thinking it typical of ideas which we would now call progressive creationism, though it can now be seen as a precursor to Wallace's essay of February 1858 On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties which finally compelled the much delayed publication of Darwin's theory. There can be no doubt of Darwin's regard for Edward Blyth: in the first chapter of The Origin of Species he writes "...Mr Blyth, whose opinion, from his large and varied stores of knowledge, I should value more than that of almost any one..."^[4]. Progressive creationism is a form of Old Earth creationism that accepts that new species have appeared successively over earths long history but that, to a greater or lesser degree, each species represents a fiat miracle (thus the creationism part), and that the first pair or representatives of species were... Two scientific papers; On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties by Alfred Russel Wallace and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection by Charles Darwin were presented to the Linnean Society of London in 1858 that first publicised Darwin — Wallace theory of evolution... The publication of Darwins theory followed on from the development of Darwins theory of evolution and culminated in the publication of his book On the Origin of Species. ... Charles Darwins Origin of Species (publ. ...

Loren Eiseley, Professor of Anthropology and the History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, spent decades tracing the origins of the ideas attributed to Darwin. In a 1979 book,^[5] he claimed that ‘the leading tenets of Darwin’s work–the struggle for existence, variation, natural selection and sexual selection–are all fully expressed in Blyth’s paper of 1835’.^[6] He also cites a number of rare words, similarities of phrasing, and the use of similar examples, which he regards as evidence of Darwin's debt to Blyth^[7]. Blyth had discussed natural selection, but Eiseley didn’t realize that most biologists did so in the generations before Darwin. Natural selection ranked as a standard item in biological discourse – but with a crucial difference from Darwin’s version: the usual interpretation invoked natural selection as part of a larger argument for created permanency. Natural selection, in this negative formulation, acted only to preserve the type, constant and inviolate, by eliminating extreme variants and unfit individuals who threatened to degrade the essence of created form. The theologian William Paley had earlier presented the following variant of this argument, doing so to refute (in later pages) a claim that modern species preserve the good designs winnowed from a much broader range of initial creations after natural selection had eliminated the less viable forms: “The hypothesis teaches, that every possible variety of being hath, at one time or other, found its way into existence (by what cause of in what manner is not said), and that those which were badly formed, perished” Loren Eiseley, 1907-1977, was a highly respected anthropologist, science writer, and poet who published a number of books in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. ... This article is about the private Ivy League university in Philadelphia. ... William Paley William Paley (July 1743 – May 25, 1805) was an English divine, Christian apologist, utilitarian, and philosopher. ...

The way in which Blyth himself argued about the modification of species can be illustrated by an extract concerning the adaptations of carnivorous mammals:

However reciprocal...may appear the relations of the preyer and the prey, a little reflection on the observed facts suffices to intimate that the relative adaptations of the former only are special, those of latter being comparatively vague and general; indicating that there having ben a superabundance which might serve as nutriment, in the first instance, and which, in many cases, was unattainable by ordinary means, particular species have therefore been so organized (that is to say, modified upon some more or less general type or plan of structure,) to avail themselves of the supply.^[8]

Other works

Blyth edited the section on 'Mammalia, Birds, and Reptiles' in the English edition of Cuvier's Animal Kingdom published in 1840, inserting many observations, corrections, and references of his own. Georges Cuvier Baron Georges Leopold Chretien Frédéric Dagobert Cuvier (August 23, 1769 - May 13, 1832) was a French naturalist, He was born at Montbéliard (then Mömpelgard in Württemberg) under the name of Johann Leopold Nicolaus Friedrich Kuefer, and was the son of a retired officer...

References

1. ^ Blyth, E., The Magazine of Natural History Volumes 8, 9 and 10, 1835–1837. Sourced from ^[9], Appendices.
2. ^ "An Attempt to Classify the "Varieties" of Animals, with Observations on the Marked Seasonal and Other Changes Which Naturally Take Place in Various British Species, and Which Do Not Constitute Varieties" by Edward Blyth (1835) Magazine of Natural History Volume 8 pages 40-53.
3. ^ Shermer, Michael. 2002 In Darwin’s shadow : the life and science of Alfred Russel Wallace. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514830-4
4. ^ Darwin, Charles, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Third Edition, 1861.
5. ^ Eiseley, L., Darwin and the Mysterious Mr X, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1979, published posthumously by the executors of his will; from Eiseley, L., Charles Darwin, Edward Blyth, and the Theory of Natural selection, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 103(1):94–114, February 1959.
6. ^ Eiseley, p. 55.
7. ^ Eiseley, pp. 59–62.
8. ^ Blyth, E., editorial footnote in Cuvier's Animal Kingdom (London: W. S. Orr & Co., 1840), p. 67.