Edward Blyth

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

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.

Species bearing his name include Blyth's Reed Warbler and Blyth's Pipit.

[edit] 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 natural selection, published in 'The Magazine of Natural History' between 1835 and 1837.^[1][2]). He was among the first to recognize Wallace's paper and brought it to the notice of Darwin in a letter on December 8, 1855: "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] 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].

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. Paley himself presents 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”

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]

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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. ↑ Darwin, Charles, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Third Edition, 1861.
4. ↑ 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.
5. ↑ Eiseley, p. 55.
6. ↑ Eiseley, pp. 59–62.
7. ↑ Blyth, E., editorial footnote in Cuvier's Animal Kingdom (London: W. S. Orr & Co., 1840), p. 67.
8. ↑ Shermer, Michael. 2002 In Darwin’s shadow : the life and science of Alfred Russel Wallace. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514830-4