Natural Selection Before the Origin

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Natural Selection before the Origin: Public Reactions of Some Naturalists to the Darwin- Wallace Papers (Thomas Boyd, Arthur Hussey, and Henry Baker Tristram) Author(s): Richard England Source: Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), pp. 267-290 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4331436 . Accessed: 25/05/2013 19:59

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This content downloaded from 150.135.115.40 on Sat, 25 May 2013 19:59:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Journal of the History of Biology 30: 267-290, 1997. 267 ? 1997 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Natural Selection Before the Origin: Public Reactions of Some Naturalists to the Darwin-Wallace Papers (Thomas Boyd, Arthur Hussey, and Henry Baker Tristram)

RICHARDENGLAND St. Michael's College Colchester,Vermont USA 05439

In 1858 Thomas Bell, president of the Linnean Society, uttered the words that would make him the fool of a hundredhistories: the year, he said, "has not, indeed, been markedby any of those strikingdiscoveries which at once revolutionize, so to speak, the departmentof science on which they bear."1 Of course on July 1 of that year, at a meeting of the Linnean Society, the joint communicationof CharlesDarwin and Alfred Russel Wallacedescribed the process of naturalselection, now known to have been one of the most revolutionary concepts in the history of science. But Bell was not alone in missing the revolution:the sixteen months between the meeting and the publicationof the Origin of Species have been called a "curiouslatent period" duringwhich there was "no"(or at least "astonishinglylittle") response from the scientific community.2 Of course, these accounts exaggerate the silence. The Darwin-Wallace papers were published in the Journal of the Linnean Society, reprintedin the Zoologist, mentionedat the British Association, and commented on in at least three Britishjournals. To consider this response astonishinglylittle is to compare it implicitly with the larger volume of comment that followed the

' Cited in A. T. Gage and W. T. Steam, A Bi-CentenaryHistory of the Linnean Society of London (London:Linnean Society Academic Press, 1988), p. 57. See also J. Gribbinand M. White, Darwin: A Life in Science (New York:Dutton, 1995), p. 210. 2C. F. A. Pantin,"The Darwin-WallaceCentenary Celebrations," Proc. Linn. Soc. London, 170 (1958), 222; Peter Bowler, Evolution, rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of Califomia Press, 1989), p. 186; Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of HarvardUniversity Press, 1982), p. 423. Most modern biographies of Darwin pass over the intervalbetween the Darwin-Wallacecommunication and the publicationof the Origin very briefly; an exception is R. Clark, The Survival of Charles Darwin (New York:Random House, 1984), pp. 108-110. See also n. 26 below.

This content downloaded from 150.135.115.40 on Sat, 25 May 2013 19:59:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 268 RICHARDENGLAND publication of the Origin. But the natural selection of the Darwin-Wallace paperswas not the naturalselection of Darwin's best-knownwork. Certainly the basic process described is the same, but in the Origin naturalselection was the driving mechanism behind a radical, evolutionary revision of the phenomena of life. In the Linnean Society papers, it was a process that principallydescribed the relationshipbetween varietiesand species; the larger evolutionaryimplications were only hinted at. Two paleontologists who noticed the communication,Richard Owen and Samuel Haughton, seem to have appreciatedits evolutionary implications, but the gentlemen naturalistswho respondedto it were more concernedwith its relevance to problems of speciation and variation.3Thomas Boyd and Arthur Hussey dismissed the evolutionary aspect of the papers as merely imaginative rather than scientific, and criticized the authors' assumptions about the indefinite variation of species. Henry Baker Tristram,the first naturalistto publicly use the new theory of naturalselection, applied it to a series of closely relatedlarks, but did not extend his use of the theorybeyond the level of species and varieties.These naturalists,like Thomas Bell, did not read the Darwin-Wallacepapers as revolutionarytexts. Their reactions must be understoodin light of the content of the communication itself, and what they regardedas its zoological context: the question of the difference between varieties and species, ratherthan that of transmutation. The work of Thomas VernonWollaston had focused the attentionof Britishnaturalists on this difficulttaxonomic problem. Tristram's reactions to the LinneanSociety papers,and later to the Huxley-Wilberforcedebate, have been interpretedby I. BernardCohen as a conversion to naturalselection, and a reconversionto orthodoxy.But a close reading of Tristram'searly use of naturalselection proves that he saw nothing unorthodoxabout it, since he applied it as an extension of Wollaston'sconservative model of the relation- ship between species and varieties. The Darwin-Wallacepapers were, in the words thatDarwin used of his own abstract,"most imperfect."Given their limited presentationof the implications of natural selection, it is hardly astonishing that naturalistsdid not

3 S. Haughton,"Presidential Address," J. Geol. Soc. Dublin, 8 (1857-60): 151-152; Richard Owen, "PresidentialAddress," Rep. Brit. Ass. Adv.Sci. (1858), xci-xciii. As I pursuequestions of species and variationhere, I will not considerthe responsesof Owen and Haughton;both are mentioned in I. Bemard Cohen, "ThreeNotes on the Reception of Darwin's Ideas on Natural Selection," in The Darwinian Heritage, ed. David Kohn (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 590-592. On Owen's evolutionism and response to the papers,see Nicolaas Rupke, Richard Owen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 236-237. Haughton's early response to evolutionism has been addressed in W. J. E. Jessop, "Samuel Haughton: A Victorian Polymath,"Hermathena, 116 (1973), 5-26; and Arnold Brackman,A Delicate Arrangement:The Strange Case of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace (New York: Times Books, 1980), pp. 73-74.

This content downloaded from 150.135.115.40 on Sat, 25 May 2013 19:59:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions NATURALSELECTION BEFORE THE ORIGIN 269 imagine what they foreshadowed. In this paper I explore the context of Englishnaturalists' views on variationin the 1850s andthe imperfectionof the Darwin-Wallacepapers. These factors underlieboth the limited volume and the muted characterof the response to the papers, which was interruptedby the publicationof the more explicitly radicalOrigin. After all, the revolution broughtabout by naturalselection came not in 1858, but in 1859.4 Thomas Bell was no fool.

Species, Varieties, and TYansmutationin the 1850s

Recent histories have shown that English naturalhistory societies of the last century tended to be conservative in ideology and methodology.Dominated by gentlemenamateurs, their meetings and journals were filled with paperson systematics, notes on sightings of rareforms in Britain,and long descriptive accountsof the floraand faunaof exotic and domesticlocales. These empirical studies were supportedby the philosophical dicta proclaimed in addresses, prefaces, and debate: since inductionwas the only way to do naturalhistory, no empirical observationwas useless; and naturaltheology was the ultimate justificationfor the close study of nature."Through Nature to Nature'sGod" was not only a common epigraphemblazoned on title pages, it was a deep, sharedassumption of most gentlemennaturalists.5 In these circles the doctrine of transmutationhad few friends. As Adrian Desmond has demonstrated,in the early nineteenth century evolutionary views had radical connections, social and scientific, and they were rarely found among gentlemen.6Just as its proponents- radicals of various stripes - transgressedagainst social codes, so the doctrine of transmutationtrans- gressed against the philosophicalcodes of naturalhistory. Transmutationism was speculative rather than inductive, and promoted a less-than-orthodox view of God's creative action. With such social and theological associations, it was considered an absurdand dangerousdoctrine. Most conservative naturalistsdismissed out of hand the idea that species might transmuteinto other species. Their job, as they saw it, was to deter- mine just what constituted a species. For gentlemen naturaliststhis was a

4Indeed, the term "naturalselection" appeared only once in Darwin's 1858 abstract. Throughoutthis paper,I use naturalselection as a shorthandto denote the processes described by Darwin and Wallace in their 1858 communication,though I recognize that the term was not used by Wallace, nor by any of the naturalistswho respondedto the papers.The question of differences between Wallace'sand Darwin'searly theories is noted below (n. 25); however, neitherDarwin, Wallace, nor any of their early readersmade much of the difference between their views (see also n. 35). David Allen, The Naturalist in Britain (London:Penguin, 1976). 6Adrian Desmond, ThePolitics of Evolution(Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1989).

This content downloaded from 150.135.115.40 on Sat, 25 May 2013 19:59:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 270 RICHARDENGLAND practical,not a metaphysical,problem: they had to decide how to discernand name species among the specimens that flooded into museums, as collectors plunderedNature at home and abroad.7What constituteda good species, and what was merely a local variety(hardly a new problemto taxonomy),became a common source of dispute and concern among naturalists.8Species "splitters" insisted that slight differences often marked a distinct species, while species "lumpers"claimed that this approachneedlessly multiplied species and confused them with mere varieties. In the 1850s, however, such squab- bles among conservative taxonomists moved onto the controversialground of transmutationism,when Thomas VernonWollaston (1822-1878) tried to explain how some naturalvarieties had descendedor developed from a parent species. The idea of descent or developmentrelating different taxonomic levels had been broached in more extreme forms by radical naturalists,but Wollaston commanded the attention of the conservative natural history community because he was one of theirown, socially and scientifically:he was a wealthy, Cambridge-educatedentomologist whose work followed the canonsof induction and naturaltheological orthodoxy.9In his comprehensive study of the insects of the MadeiraIslands (Insecta Maderensia, 1854), he hadnoted slight differencesbetween certainisland forms of species like Scarithesabbreviatus. In this case, he suggested that these island forms were not distinct species, but varieties that had developed from a common, parentspecies: the species in question is an extremelyvariable one, assumingdifferences of size according to the altitude at which it lives and differences of sculptureaccording to the circumstancesof the spot on which it is isolated. That such is actually the case, a careful observationof the many minute changes which the insect has undergonein the variousislands and altitudes will, I think, prove to a demonstration.For it is impossible to suppose that every rock contains its own species, that is to say, has had a separate creation expressly for itself, a conclusion at which we must assuredly arrive, if small and even constant differences are of necessity specific.

7See Allen, Naturalist in Britain (above, n. 5), pp. 138-144; andGordon McOuat, "Species, Names, and Things, from Darwinto the Experimentalists,"Ph.D. diss., Universityof Toronto, 1993, pp. 86-89. 8A list of published references to questions of species and variationswas sent to Darwin by LeonardJenyns in April 1858: see F. Burkhardtand S. Smith, eds., The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, 7 vols. (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1985-91), VII, 73-77 (hereaftercited as CCD). On the importanceof the "species problem"in the 1850s for Sir Joseph Hooker and Wallace, see Janet Browne, The Secular Ark: Studies in the History of Biogeography (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1983), pp. 159-160, 175-176. 9L. M. Cook, "T. VernonWollaston and the 'Monstrous Doctrine,' ' Arch. Nat. Hist., 22 (1995), 333-348.

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Rejecting this hypothesis as untenable,and as contraryto all experience, we are drivento acknowledgethat isolation does in nearlyevery instance, in the course of time, affect, more or less sensibly, external insect form; ... which being admittedwe have at once an intelligibleprinciple whereby to account for modifications innumerable,each of which, when viewed simply as a difference, independentlyof the species producing it, might have been regardedas sufficient to erect a "species"upon, had the desire for multiplyingthem overbalancedthe love of truth.10

Wollaston'swork on these island insects attractedDarwin's attention.He, afterall, had noted differencesin the faunaof the Galapagos(which Wollaston cited), thoughhe had come to more radicalconclusions aboutthe significance of this variation.'1Darwin drew Wollaston into his inner circle of scientific friends, hoping that he might be persuadedto embracewider views on transmutation.In the last week of April 1856, Wollastonjoined Thomas Huxley and Joseph Hooker at Darwin's home at Down to talk species. In a second- hand report, Sir Charles Lyell wrote that "they (all four of them) ran a tilt againstspecies fartherthan I believe thatthey are deliberatelyprepared to go. Wollaston least unorthodox.I cannot easily see how they can go so far, and not embracethe whole Lamarckiandoctrine."12 How much Darwin spoke of his own views at this meeting is not known, but Wollastoncertainly drew the line at Lamarck. In his book On the Variationof Species (1856), a slim volume dedicatedto Darwin,Wollaston outlines possible causes of race-producingvariation (these include climate, extreme temperatures,the natureof the soil, and isolation), and illustrates his suggestions with examples from his study of Madeiran insects. Yet he repeatedlyasserts that he is dealing with "legitimatevariation," "within fixed specific limits."13 The last pages of the book contain a strong and explicit repudiationof the doctrine of transmutation.Far from being unorthodox about species, Wollaston insisted that his views strengthened ratherthan weakened the case for their stability:

'0T. V. Wollaston,Insecta Maderensia:Being an Account of the Insects of the Islands of the Madeiran Group(London: Van Voorst, 1854), p. 11 (emphasis in the original). " F. J. Sulloway, "Darwinand His Finches: The Evolution of a Legend,"J. Hist. Biol., 15 (1982), 1-53, describes Darwin'sown gradualrealization of the significanceof the Galapagos fauna to his evolutionarythought. 12Charles Lyell to James Fox Bunbury,April 30, 1856, in K. M. Lyell, Life, Letters, and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart. (London: John Murray, 1881), II, 212. "Lamarckian doctrine"refers to J. B. Lamarck'sevolutionary theory. '3T. V. Wollaston, On the Variationof Species, with Especial Reference to the Insecta: Followed by an Inquiryinto the Nature of Genera (London:Van Voorst, 1856), p. 35.

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in suggesting the inquiry... whetherthe small shades of differencewhich have often, because permanent,been at once regardedas specific, may not be sometimesrendered intelligible by a knowledge of the localities in which the creatureshave been matured... I do not necessarily open the door to the disciples of Lamarck,or infringe upon the strict orthodoxy of our zoological creed. On the contrary,indeed, I believe that ... those very hyper-accuratedefiners who recognize a "species,"wheresoever the minutest discrepancy is shadowed forth, will be found to have been the most determinedabettors of that dogma, - seeing that their species, if such they be, do most assuredlypass into each other.14

Wollaston defined a species as a community of descent, including varieties that had developed from it by various environmentalcauses. Yet he insisted that, "whateverthe several ranges within which the membersof the organic creationare free to vary,we are positively certainthat, unless the definitionof a species, as involvingrelationship, be more thana delusion or romance,their circumferencesare of necessity real.'5 Wollaston,while broachingwhat might be called a limited transmutationism,repudiated the "disciples of Lamarck" and reaffirmed"orthodoxy": species were real, and they varied within limits. After reading Wollaston's book, Darwin wrote to him, suggesting that he would eventuallyabandon his arbitrarylimits to variationand come to accept the full doctrine of transmutation.He cajoled, "I have heard Unitarianism called a feather-bedto catch a falling Christian;and I think you are now on such a feather bed, but I believe you will fall much lower and lower."'16 Wollaston,however, proved to be quite comfortableon his "feather-bed"of variation within specific limits. In his review of the Origin of Species, he rejectedthe idea of indefinitevariation, and he never did fall in with Darwin's evolutionaryviews.17

"Some Strangely Heretical Notions": June 7, 1858

While Wollaston'sinsistence on specific limits disappointedDarwin, some of his colleagues were shocked by his use of development, even at a limited

'4Ibid., p. 190. 15Ibid., p. 193 (emphasis in the original). 16 Charles Darwin to Thomas VernonWollaston, June 6, 1856, in CCD, VI, 134. 17T. V. Wollaston, review of the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., 5 (1860), 132-143; reprintedin David Hull, Darwin and His Critics: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 126-141. For an excellent discussion of Wollaston'sreasons for rejecting transmutationismsee Cook, "T. VernonWollaston" (above, n. 9).

This content downloaded from 150.135.115.40 on Sat, 25 May 2013 19:59:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions NATURAL SELECTIONBEFORE THE ORIGIN 273 level. A debate at the Entomological Society illustrates the controversy attending Wollaston's ideas about variation, less than a month before the Darwin-Wallacepapers were read. The opponents were two of England's most prominent lepidopterists:Henry Tibbats Stainton (1822-1892), who was also the influentialeditor of the Entomologists'Weekly Intelligencer; and JohnObadiah Westwood (1 805-1893), a foundingmember of the Entomolog- ical Society, whose work on the classification of insects had recently earned him the Royal Society's medal.'8 On May 3, 1858, Stainton had proposed a name for a new species; Westwood had challenged him, suggesting that the specimen in question was a mere modificationof anotherspecies "produced by the difference in the food plant"of the two forms.19Wollaston's views on the differencebetween species and varieties would soon be aired. An outragedStainton came to the following meeting on June7 with a paper "Onthe Persistenceof Species," in which he attackedthe idea thatdifferences in food could producenew species: Some strangely heretical notions were breached at the last meeting.... Species somewhat similar feeding on closely allied plants were suggested as probablevariations caused by the difference of food . . . and thus each genus might be assumed to consist of only a single species varying accordingto its food and other circumstances. Hence species are not; they were merely phantomsof the brainof the naturalist.20

For Stainton,species were, of course, real, albeit only discemible by naturalists with a real knowledge of the specimens and groupsin question;views like Westwood's involved the denial not only of species, but also of the compe- tence of the naturalistswho named them. The idea was not only absurd,but also dangerous,and Stainton"should not have recurredto the subject but for the numberof young entomologists . . . on some of whom the idea of gradual developments .. . might have most injurious effects, were it not effectually exploded."2' Westwood retorted that Stainton had far from exploded the idea, and appealedto the authorityof Wollaston'swork, "since the publicationof which a great change had taken place in the minds, especially of German naturalists, as to the specific rankof many supposed species of Carabideousinsects, which were now sunk into local sub-species".An admissionof subspecies, or

'8Both Stainton and Westwood were sufficiently well regarded to gamer entries in the Dictionary of National Biography. 19"Reportof the Proceedingsof the Entomological Society,"Zoologist, 16 (1858), 6115. 20Ibid., p. 6153. 21 Ibid., p. 6154.

This content downloaded from 150.135.115.40 on Sat, 25 May 2013 19:59:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 274 RICHARD ENGLAND local varieties,did not entail a denial of the realityof species, however.West- wood claimed that"it was quite necessary to registerthese permanentor even transitorysub-species, but far more philosophical to endeavourto discover the centre, so to speak, from which they radiated."22He was denying not, the reality of species, but Stainton'scompetence in mislabelinga mere varietyas a new species. The recordedcomments of other naturalistspresent show that they sided with Stainton, and his view of the absolute fixity of species. He concluded the argumentby claiming that Westwood's position "went fully the length of maintainingthe developmenttheory."23 Wollaston's work was suspect because it broached the possibility that permanentforms, viewed by some as good species, mightbe derivedvarieties ratherthan independentcreations. To men like Stainton, this meant simply that some species changed into other species: the dangerousdoctrine of transmutation! Wollaston's defense, that this variation was limited to specific boundariesand therefore"legitimate," meant nothing to those "splitters"who saw good species where "lumpers"saw only varieties. But Wollaston and his supportersdid not consider themselves transmutationists;varieties may well have been developed, but good species were created.Only eleven days before Darwin first saw Wallace's essay "On the Tendency of Species to Departindefinitely from the OriginalType," Wollaston's much more conservative work on variationhad alreadydivided gentlemen naturalists.

The Darwin-Wallace Communication: Naturalists' Reactions

On June 18, 1858, Darwin was stunned to discover that Wallace's essay outlined a mechanism of evolution very similar to that which he had been developing for twenty years. He wrote to Lyell the same day, lamenting the "strikingco-incidence" and the smashing of his hopes of originalityand priority.24His fears were only partly justified, thanks to the maneuvers of Lyell and Joseph Hooker, who arrangedfor a joint readingof abstractsfrom Darwin's papersand Wallace's essay before the LinneanSociety on July 1. Much has been made of the doubtful honor of this rush for priority,and still more of the exact similarities and dissimilaritiesbetween Darwin's and

22 Ibid. 23Ibid., p. 6155. A later commentator on this debate, F. 0. Morris, publicly supported Westwoodover Stainton,and denied thatthe theoryof variationwithin species led to transmutationism. Morriswas one of Darwin's fiercest critics in the 1860s, but he makes no mention of the Darwin-Wallacecommunication when discussing variationwithin species in "Species and Varieties,"Naturalist, 8 (1858), 234-235. 24 Darwin to Lyell, June 18, 1858, in F. Darwin, ed., Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, 2 vols. (New York:Appleton, 1898), I, 473.

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Wallace's views.25 The effect of the joint communicationon its first hearers and readers has been less generally studied. If the Darwin-Wallacepapers were revolutionaryin content, why was there not a correspondingreaction? I will argue that the papers were not revolutionary:they presented a view of speciation and variation that could be assimilated into ongoing debates among orthodox naturalists, and did not successfully communicate their radical implications. Most historians have assumed that the papers did get their evolutionary message across, and have referredto the recollections of two men at the meeting, George Bentham and Joseph Hooker, as printed in Darwin's Life and Letters.26 George Bentham, vice-president of the Linnean society, withdrew his lengthy paper on British flora from the July 1 meeting to make room for the last-minuteaddition sponsored by Lyell and Hooker. In his paperhe had planned to make several comments on the fixity of species, but on hear- ing the joint communication, he recalled, "I felt bound to defer mine for reconsideration."27Bentham has been called "quick-witted"in realizing that the fixity of species was no longer a tenable theory, given the strength of Darwin's and Wallace'sviews.28 Recently, however, Peter Stevens has shown that Benthamdid not change his views on species fixity so promptly:having been bumped off the agenda of the July meeting, he simply delivered his lengthy paper (including an unchangeddiscussion of species) at meetings in November 1858 and February 1859. Benthamapparently forgot this when he was asked for his recollections of the meeting for Darwin's Life and Letters. Stevens concludes that "the idea that Bentham was so disconcertedby the ideas in the Darwin/Wallace contributionsthat he immediately decided not to read a paper in which he assumed the fixity of species is yet anothermyth surroundingDarwin's ideas

25 See, e.g., BarbaraBeddall, "Wallace, Darwin, and the Theoryof NaturalSelection,"J. Hist. Biol., I (1968), 261-323; Brackman,Delicate Arrangement(above, n. 3); Malcolm J. Kottler, "CharlesDarwin and Alfred Russel Wallace:Two Decades of Debate over NaturalSelection," in Kohn, Darwinian Heritage (above, n. 3), pp. 367-432; Peter Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpretinga Historical Myth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), pp. 42-45; CCD, VII, xvi-xvii. 26 Hooker's reminiscences are the main source for John Bowlby, Charles Darwin: A New Life (London: Norton, 1990), pp. 331-332; Clark, Survival of Charles Darwin (above, n. 2), pp. 108-109; and Peter Brent, Charles Darwin: A Man of Enlarged Curiosity(New York: Harperand Row, 1981), pp. 415-416. Bentham'srecollections are cited in Brackman,Delicate Arrangement,p. 72; and in A. Desmond and J. Moore, Darwin (New York: Time-Warner, 1992), p. 470. 27 F. Darwin,Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (above, n. 24), II, 88. 28 Bracman, Delicate Arrangement,p. 72.

This content downloaded from 150.135.115.40 on Sat, 25 May 2013 19:59:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 276 RICHARD ENGLAND and their reception."29Only after the Origin was published did Bentham realize how much he would have to change his views. More frequentlycited is Hooker's memory of the meeting. Recalling the event of twenty-fouryears before, he wrote that the interestexcited was intense, but the subjecttoo novel and too ominous for the old school to enter the lists before armouring.It was talked over after the meeting with "batedbreath": Lyell's approval,and perhapsin a small way mine, as his lieutenantin the affair,rather overawed the Fellows, who would otherwise have flown out against the doctrine.We had, too, the advantageof being familiarwith the authorsand their theme.30

Perhapsthe audiencedid understandthe significanceof the papers,then? J. W. T. Moody has suggested that Hooker, looking back over the tumultuousand eventful history of Darwinism,"no doubt embellishedhis reflectionupon the meeting."31Moody, noting the length of the meeting, suggests that"the sheer volume of contributionspractically buried the Darwin-Wallacepapers. The fellows were not so much stunnedby the new ideas as they were overwhelmed by the amountof informationloaded upon them at the meeting. Much of the Darwin-Wallaceconcept of naturalselection went over their heads."32 It is difficultto dismiss Hooker's account,though he may have embellished the memory,and Moody's scenario may seem plausible. But there is another possible reason lurking behind the silence of the audience: the Darwin- Wallace communication did not really explain why natural selection was exciting. This is not to deny the importance of the ideas it contained, or the novelty of the message, but neither Darwin's nor Wallace's contribution did much more than outline a hypothetical mechanism for describing how varieties, or new species, could arise from an original type.33 Historians have comparedthe details of the Darwin and Wallace papers in an attempt to discover just how similar or dissimilar their ideas were, but have given little considerationto the impression that the papers made on their readers.

29p. F. Stevens, "George Bentham and the DarwinlWallacepapers of 1858: More Myths Surroundingthe Origin and Acceptance of EvolutionaryIdeas," Linnean, 11: 2 (1995), 16. 30F. Darwin, Life and Letters and Charles Darwin (above, n. 24), 1, 482. The full text of the letter is given in L. Huxley, The Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (London: Murray,1918), II, 300. 31 J. W. T. Moody, "The Reading of the Darwin and Wallace Papers:An Historical 'Non- Events,' "J. Soc. Bibliog. Nat. Hist., 5 (1971), 474. 32 Ibid., p. 475. Since the Darwin-Wallacepapers were read at the beginningof the meeting, it seems unlikely that the membersof the Linnean Society would have failed to absorb their message simply because many other paperswere read after them. 33See H. Lewis McKinney, Wallace and Natural Selection (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), p. 143, for a possible explanationof why both Darwin and Wallaceemphasized the mechanismof change, and did "not discuss the case for evolution."

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The mechanismthat we now know as naturalselection was describedclearly enough, but its wider implicationswere given only a brief mention. Darwin's papers consisted of an extract from his 1844 sketch on species (readby Hookerin the same year) and an abstractof his theoryof naturalselection, sent to Asa Gray on September5, 1857. These papers were chosen for the Linnean Society meeting because two reputablenaturalists could vouch for their authenticity,thereby establishing Darwin's priorityover Wallace in the ideas they presented.The extract from the 1844 essay outlines the basic elements of the mechanism of natural selection; the abstract sent to Gray amplifiesthis description,and explicitly claims that this process can produce not merely varieties but also new species. The abstractconcludes with an image of evolutionaryhistory now well known, that of a branchingtree: This I believe to be the origin of the classification or arrangementof all organicbeings at all times. These always seem to branchand sub-branch like a tree from a common trunk;the flourishingtwigs destroyingthe less vigorous, - the dead and lost branchesrudely representing lost generaand families.34

Wallace's essay also dwells on the processes of struggle and variationthat producenew varietiesand species; his claim for the power of naturalselection to produce new species is made somewhat more explicitly than Darwin's.35 But, like Darwin, Wallace mentions the deeper historical meaning of this process only briefly at the end of his essay: This progression by minute steps in different directions, but always checked and balancedby the necessary conditions, subjectto which alone existence can be preserved, may, it is to be believed, be followed out so as to agree with all the phenomena presented by organized beings, their extinction and succession in past ages, and all the extraordinary modificationsof form, instinct and habits which they exhibit.36

To biologists and historiansfamiliar with the Origin these sentences clearly express the idea thatnatural selection is being invoked to explain the structure and arrangementof all organic nature. But at the Linnean Society, and in

34 This iS the version probably read at the Linnean Society, as cited in CCD, VII, 509 (emphasis in the original). Some small changes were made for the version printed in the Journal of the Linnean Society. 35 This probablybecause Darwin's contribution was assembledmore quickly thanWallace's - not because Wallace was making substantially different claims, as Brackman argues in Delicate Arrangement (above, n. 3), pp. 74-75. Other differences between Wallace's and Darwin's views are discussed in the works cited in n. 25, above. 36 Alfred Russel Wallace, "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the OriginalType," Zool. J. Linn. Soc., 3 (1858), 62.

This content downloaded from 150.135.115.40 on Sat, 25 May 2013 19:59:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 278 RICHARDENGLAND its Proceedings, these unsupportedclaims closed two papers that offered imaginary examples of a natural process that produced new species and varieties. As Darwin's abstractconcluded: "This sketch is most imperfect; but in so short a space I cannot do better. Your imagination must fill up very wide blanks."37The naturalistswho heardand readthe Darwin-Wallace papersdid not understandthe revolutionaryimportance the authorsattached to the processes describedbecause the sketches were indeed "imperfect."For this hard-coreinductivist audience, imaginationhad no place in science. The mechanismwas clearly and carefullyexplained, but its wider effects were so baldly stated that the naturalistswho did publicly notice the communication simply did not imagine that they could be taken seriously. Two little-noticed reactions suggest how conservative naturalistsinter- preted the Darwin-Wallace papers. Edward Newman, the editor of the Zoologist, was sufficiently impressed by the papers to reprintthem in his journal, a typically descriptive, staid publication. The brief comments of Thomas Boyd and ArthurHussey followed in the same journal in 1859.38 Both made criticisms that were to become common in early reviews of the Origin: the mechanism of natural selection was too speculative, and the authorsassumed too much in supposing that variationmight be both unlim- ited and beneficial. Interestingly,neither of these critics felt that the wider implicationsof naturalselection were worth taking seriously. ArthurHussey opens by noting that Darwin's papers "seem to extend the operation of his theory into a period resembling geological epochs, which carriesus at once into the region of conjecture,- a "barrenground," upon the boundariesof which I have no inclinationto wander."39Accordingly, Hussey criticizes only the mechanism of natural selection as a process producing species and varieties. Boyd likewise criticizes naturalselection on this level, and closes his brief review with a dismissal of its possible implications. ConsideringWallace's last sentence (cited above), Boyd confesses that he is quite at a loss to know what meaning to attach to it.... Does he mean that by the tendency to vary we may explain all the differences that obtainbetween differentvarieties of the same species, or betweendifferent species of the same genus, or between differentgenera of the same order;

37 CharlesDarwin, "Abstractof a Letterfrom C. Darwin Esq., to Prof. Asa Gray,U.S., dated Down, September5th, 1857," Zool. J. Linn. Soc., 3 (1959), 53. 38ThomasBoyd, "On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties,"Zoologist, 17 (1859), 6357-6359; ArthurHussey, "The Tendency of Species to Form Varieties,"ibid., pp. 6474- 6475. I have been unableto locate any biographicalinfornation aboutor publicationsby these naturalists,apart from other minor notices in the Zoologist. Their responses have been very briefly noticed (as "negative")in Hull, Darwin and His Critics (above, n. 17), pp. 227-228; and Hussey has been cited in Clark,Survival of Charles Darwin (above, n. 2), p. 109. 39 Hussey, "Tendencyof Species to Form Varieties,"p. 6474.

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or, furtherstill, thatwe may traceback all organiclife, as we see it now, to some unknownroot in the far-off geological ages, some sponge or polype, or vitalized cell, from which everything has since sprung. The words I have quoted will bear this construction,and if the tendency to vary were a law of indefinitevariation, it might carry out this idea; but being what it is, simply a tendency,it seems to me that paintingsuch an ideal picture on the subject is like Science sitting down at the feet of Imagination.40

While Darwin made a plea for imagination, these naturalistswere unable to respond: imagination was alien to their zoological creed of empiricism and induction. These early reactions of minor gentlemen naturalistsshow that they believed strongly in the reality of species. Given that some of their contemporariescould not accept even the closely limited variationof Wollaston's theory, it is not "astonishing"that they were simply unable to considerunsupported claims for the explanatorypower of indefinitevariation. While the Darwin-Wallacepapers contained a good descriptionof a mechanism for generatingnew species and varieties, this was only the tip of the naturalselection iceberg. Wallace'sessay was a preliminarysketch. Darwin's papers were preparedand presented hurriedly:of first importancewas the question of priority.A fuller descriptionof the importanceof naturalselection, and a more widespreadreaction, were yet to come. As Darwin worked at the Origin he expressed no surprisethat the Linnean Society papers had caused so little stir.41 However, the critical reactionof Hussey and Boyd is not the best evidence that the Darwin-Wallace papers failed to communicate the revolutionary implications of natural selection. For that we must go to the first "posi- tive" response, the sympatheticapplication of "naturalmeans of selection" in an ornithologicalstudy by Tristram.

Tristram: Hero or Traitor?

In the October 1859 issue of the Ibis, the Reverend Henry Baker Tristram published an article "On the Omithology of NorthernAfrica."42 This work, the result of two winters spent in Algeria, was typical of its class: the report of an energetic amateurnaturalist on the fauna or flora of some relatively exotic locale, with a list of species sighted and theirlocations, the occasional

4 Boyd, "On the Tendencyof Species to Form Varieties,"p. 6359. 41See CCD, vol. VII. The only reaction Darwin notices in his correspondenceis that of Samuel Haughton(see n. 3). 42 H. B. Tristram,"On the Ornithologyof NorthernAfrica," Ibis, 1 (1859-60), 415-435.

This content downloaded from 150.135.115.40 on Sat, 25 May 2013 19:59:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 280 RICHARDENGLAND claim of a new species discovered, and, of course, quibbles with the reports of earlierworkers. Tristram's article would have been forgottenby historians had they not noticed that in it he applied the theory of naturalselection to explain variationsin the plumage and structureof a series of desert larks, a month before the Origin was published. EdwardPoulton (1 856-1943), an Oxfordneo-Darwinist and early historian of evolution, praisedTristram in Charles Darwin and the Theoryof Natural Selection (1896): "one distinguishednaturalist publicly accepted the theory of naturalselection before the publication of the "Origin of Species," and therefore as the direct result of Darwin's and Wallace's joint paper. This great distinction belongs to Canon Tristram."43When we read the relevant passages of Tristram'sornithological report, it is easy to see why Poultonwas impressed: Writingwith a series of about 100 Larksof variousspecies fromthe Sahara before me, I cannot help feeling convinced of the truthof the views set forth by Messrs. Darwin and Wallace in their communications to the Linnean Society, to which my friend Mr. A. Newton last year directed my attention,"On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties,and on the Perpetuationof Varietiesand Species by naturalmeans of selection." It is hardlypossible, I should think, to illustratethis theory betterthan by the Larksand Chats of North Africa. In all these birds we trace gradual modifications of coloration and anatomicalstructure, deflecting by very gentle gradationsfrom the ordi- nary type; but when we take the extremes, presenting most marked differences.44

Tristramsuggests thatthese differences"have a very directbearing on the ease or difficultywith which the animal contrives to maintainits existence."45He proceedsto considerthe necessity of protectivecoloration for desert animals: without exception, the upper plumage of every bird ... and also the fur of all small mammals, and the skin of all the Snakes and Lizards is of one isabelline or sand colour.... There are individual varieties in depth of hue among all creatures.In the struggle for life which we know to be going on among all species, a very slight change for the better, such as improved means of escaping from its naturalenemies (which would be

43Edward Poulton, Charles Darwin and the Theoryof Natural Selection (London:Cassell, 1896), p. 92. Tristramwas made an honorary canon of Durham Cathedralin 1870, and a residentiarycanon in 1873. 44Tristram,"Ornithology of Northem Africa"(above, n. 42), p. 429. Ibid., pp. 429-430.

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the effect of an alterationfrom a conspicuouscolour to one resemblingthe hue of the surroundingobjects), would give the varietythat possessed it a decided advantageover the typicalor otherforms of the species. Now in all creatures,from Man downwards, we find a tendencyto transmitindividual varieties or peculiaritiesto the descendants.A peculiarityeither of colour or form soon becomes hereditarywhen there are no counteractingcauses, either from change of climate, or admixtureof other blood. Suppose this transmittedpeculiarity to continue for some generations,especially when manifest advantagesarise from its possession, and the variety becomes not only a race, with its variationsstill more strongly imprintedupon it, but it becomes the typical form of that country.46 Tristram'ssimple illustrationof this might have come out of a neo-Darwinian textbook: To apply the theory to the case of the Sahara. If the Algerian Desert were colonized by a few pairs of Crested Larks, - putting aside the ascertained fact of the tendency of an arid, hot climate to bleach all dark colours, - we know that the probability is, that one or two pairs would be likely of a darkercomplexion than the others. These, and such of their offspring as most resembled them, would become more liable to captureby their naturalenemies, hawks and carnivorousbeasts. The lighter coloured ones would enjoy more or less immunity from such attacks. Let this stage of things continue for a few hundredyears, and the dark-colouredindividuals would be exterminated,the light coloured remainand inhabitthe land. This process, aided by the above-mentioned tendency of the climate to blanch the coloration still more, would in a few centuriesproduce the Galerida abyssinica as the typical form. And it must be noted, that between it and the EuropeanG. cristata there is no distinctionbut that of colour.47 Tristramalso explains the difference between the short-billed Galerida isabellina and the long-billed G. arenicola by appealingto naturalselection: the former, seeking food in its rocky habitat, needs "strengthrather than length"; whereas the latter, seeking food in the deep sand of the desert, "derives a great advantage"from its longer bill.48Referring to the effects of differing plumage and bill-size, Tristramreflects: Here are only two causes enumeratedwhich might serve to create as it were a new species from an old one, yet they are perfectlynatural causes,

46Ibid., p. 430. 47Ibid., pp. 430-431. 4 Ibid., p. 431.

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and such as, I think, must have occurred,and are possibly occurringstill. We know so little of the causes which in the majority of cases make species rare or common, that there may be hundredsof others at work, some even morepowerful than these, which go to perpetuateand eliminate certain forms "accordingto naturalmeans of selection." But even these superficialcauses appearsufficient to explain the markedfeatures of the Desert races which frequentlyapproach so very closely the typical form, and yet possess such invariablydistinctive characteristics, that naturalists seem agreed to elevate them to the rankof species.49

Tristram'suse of naturalselection, then, seems a keen appreciationof the Darwin-Wallacepapers comparedwith the ratherhostile responses of other authors.Poulton noted thatTristram also expresseda belief in specialcreation, but he refused to see this as a real difference between Tristramand Darwin; he hailed Tristram'sparagraphs as "a most complete acceptanceof natural selection, at the same time affordingexcellent examples of its operation."50 Poultonpromoted Tristram's claim to fame in his historyof naturalselection, in presidentialaddresses to the British Association, and in his Encyclopwdia Britannica(1 1th ed.) articleon CharlesDarwin. In Poulton'swritings Tristram is presented as a hero, the only naturalistto properly understandnatural selection before the Origin was published. I. BernardCohen has recentlychallenged Poulton's account, suggesting that Tristramwas only briefly "converted"to the acceptanceof naturalselection, andthat he was "reconverted"to orthodoxyduring the famousdebate between Thomas Henry Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforcein 1860. Drawingon letters cited in A. F. R. Wollaston's Life of Alfred Newton (1921), Cohen notes that Tristramwas outraged by the debate: "Like the clergyman he was, rather than scientist, he saw the new doctrine of evolution as 'one blind plunge into the gulph of atheismand coarsest materialism.'-51 Cohen's interpretationwas anticipatedby FrederickBurkhardt and David Allen, both of whom have suggested that Tristramretreated from his early acceptanceof naturalselection for theological reasons.52For Cohen, the tale of Tristram's conversionto the acceptanceof naturalselection and his rapidreconversion at

49Ibid., pp. 431-432. 50Poultoncites the last paragraphof the Origin: 'There is a grandeurin this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathedby the Creatorinto a few forms or into one" (Poulton, Charles Darwin [above, n. 43], p. 94). Tristran's ratherdifferent view of special creation is described below. 51Cohen, "ThreeNotes" (above, n. 3), pp. 597-598. 52 F. Burkhardt,"England and Scotland:The Learned Societies," The ComparativeRecep- tion of Darwinism, ed. T. Glick (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972), p. 52n65; Allen, Naturalist in Britain (above, n. 5), p. 178. See also Clark,Survival of CharlesDarwin (above, n. 2), pp. 109-1 10.

This content downloaded from 150.135.115.40 on Sat, 25 May 2013 19:59:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions NATURALSELECTION BEFORE THE ORIGIN 283 the Huxley-Wilberforcedebate provides "a strikingillustration of the power of the received opinion or currentorthodoxy to inhibit the acceptanceof the new idea of Darwinianevolution by naturalselection."53 Cohen's account has been cited by Adrian Desmond in his biographyof Huxley (1994). Here Tristramis pictured as a parson driven back into the trenchesof orthodoxyby a blastfrom Huxley's "Whitworthgun," evolution.54 Cohen concludes that at the Huxley-Wilberforcedebate, Tristram"then and there became an anti-Darwinianand remained so for the rest of his life": in effect, a traitor to the Darwinian cause.55 He was not, Cohen says, "a staunchand foremost advocateof Darwinism . .. the impressionthat is given by Poulton."56 Poulton's and Cohen's visions of Tristram are black and white: anti- Darwinian,or Darwinian.Neither historian, however, considers the zoological context of Tristram'swork, or his later studies as a naturalist.Both assume that his use of naturalselection entailed a greater acceptance of Darwin's ideas thanis justifiedby the availableevidence. A considerationof Tristram's interest in naturalhistory, and a close reading of his article, show that while he accepted, ratherthan rejected, "naturalmeans of selection," he, like the early critics Hussey and Boyd, treatedit as a process acting on species and varieties, and ignored the wider implicationsof the mechanism. His position was more ambiguousthan histories dealing in Darwinismand anti-Darwinism commonly allow.

Tristram Revised

Tristramwas bom in Northumberland,educated in classics at Oxford, and became, like his father before him, an evangelical rural vicar. Respiratory illness drove him to seek warmer climes in 1847, and it was as a naval chaplain in Bermuda that he first took up natural history, particularlythe collecting of shells and birds.57In 1849 he returnedto Englandas the rectorof

53 Cohen, "ThreeNotes," p. 598. 54 AdrianDesmond, Huxley: The Devil's Disciple (London:Michael Joseph, 1994), pp. 283, 418n26. s5I. Bemard Cohen, Revolution in Science (Cambridge,Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 290. 56 Cohen, "ThreeNotes" (above, n. 3), p. 597. 57 This biographyis drawnfrom F. S. Bodenheimer,"Canon Henry Baker Tristram of Durham (1822-1906)," Durham Univ.J., 49 (1957), 94-97; idem, "CanonH. B. Tristram(1822-1906): A PreliminaryBibliography, Obituaries and Other BiographicalNotes," Proc. Univ. Durham Phil. Soc. (1957), 12-22; and Tristram'sobituary in Proc. Roy. Soc. London, ser. B, 80 (1908), xlii-xliv. For a more comprehensivetreatment of Tristram'sscientific work see R. A. Baker, "'The GreatGun of Durham'- CanonHenry Baker Tristram, F.R.S. (1822-1906): An Outline

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CastleEden, Durham,continuing his work in naturalhistory, and occasionally sending off brief notes to joumals like the Zoologist. In the winters of 1855- 56 and 1856-57 his "weak chest" again compelled him to leave England, and he twice visited Algeria. Duringhis lengthy expeditions to the bordersof Frenchcolonial territory,Tristram collected and observed enough to provide materialfor his Ibis article and his first book of popularnatural history, The Great Sahara (1860).58 His early work in naturalhistory, like that of most gentlemen naturalists,betrays no interestin questions of transmutation. In 1859 Tristramwas elected presidentof the Tyneside Naturalists'Field Club, one of England'sfirst natural history societies. In the same year,he was among the foundersof the BritishOmithological Union, with such naturalists as Alfred Newton, Osbert Salvin, and Philip Lutley Sclater; he was also among the first contributorsto its journal,the Ibis. It was Tristram'sfriend Newton who suggestedto him the possible application of naturalselection to the desert larks.Having seen Tristram'scollection, Newton read the newly publishedLinnean Society papersin August 1858. In a letter to Tristrama few days thereafter,he suggested that naturalselection could explain the variation in plumage and bill-size in Tristram'sseries of larks.59Newton, recalling his own reaction to the Darwin-Wallacepapers in an 1888 articleon "TheEarly Days of Darwinism,"described how he applied it to varieties of desert larks;however, as he rememberedit, this application of naturalselection did not seem to him to touch on its real meaning: But it may be said that, after all, such difficulties as I had now found so easily solved were of a kind almost contemptibleand beneaththe notice of all but a "species-monger."The new theory of NaturalSelection might serve perfectly well to explain how one variety or even race could pass into another;it might even serve to establish a Transmutationof Species, on a low view of species; but was it capableof doing more thanthis? And especially could the process of almost invisible steps ... be attendedby such momentous results and end in producingeffects so stupendousas those which we now-a-days express by the word Evolution?60

Newton believed thatthe wider implicationsof naturalselection were indeed justified, but he did not make his supportpublic until after the Origin was of His Life, Collections, and Contributionsto NaturalHistory," Arch. Nat. Hist., 23 (1996), 327-341. 58Henry Baker Tristram, The Great Sahara (London: John Murray, 1860; repr. Darf Publishers, 1985). 59AlexanderF. R. Wollaston,Life of AlfredNewton (London:John Murray,1921), pp. 1 5- 117. 60A. Newton, "The Early Days of Darwinism,"Macmillan's Mag., 57 (1888), 246.

This content downloaded from 150.135.115.40 on Sat, 25 May 2013 19:59:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions NATURALSELECTION BEFORE THE ORIGIN 285 published.Indeed, he may not have mentionedhis views on the "stupendous" power of naturalselection to his friendTristram. All thatappears in Tristram's article is an applicationof naturalselection to a problem,in Newton's words, "beneaththe notice of all but a 'species-monger."' The mentionof the Darwin-Wallacepapers comes in Tristram'sdescription of the eighty-eighthbird species he noticed in NorthernAfrica, a new species that he named Certhilauda salvini after his friend Salvin, though he was "awarethat it may be termed a local race more properlythan a species."61 He comparedC. salvini's measurementswith those of its nearestrelative, C. desertorum,noted the differences in their localities, and cited the authority of an independentobserver who agreed "thatthere were two species, i.e. as species are now made."62Having alluded to the problem of how naturalists "made"species, Tristramlaunched into his passage on the series of varying larkscited above. His applicationof naturalselection shows thathe accurately understoodthe process. His conclusions show that he is used it only at the level of varieties and species: I cannot but hope that ere long ornithologistswill systematically recognize, what is alreadyadmitted in a greatdegree by conchologists, the clear distinctionbetween species and race. I do not see any difficulty in taking as the true definitionof a species all the individualswho may reasonably be presumed to have a common origin, though among them there may exist races differing from one another,even in a considerabledegree.63

In this last sentence both Tristram'sdebt to Wollaston,and his distance from Darwin and Wallace, are clear. Tristram,like Wollaston, considers species to be real, static entities that include a numberof derived varieties. Natural selection is one of the possible causes that produce these varieties. While Tristramclearly understoodthe mechanism of naturalselection, he did not imagine that Darwin and Wallace intendedit to be more than a contribution to debates about varieties and species. In applying the mechanismof natural selection he did not consider himself to be supportinga revolution in natural history. In the last paragraphof his discussion of naturalselection, Tristramdefends the idea of the direct divine creationof species: I do not mean for a moment to imply ... that we are to presume to limit Creative Power so far as to endeavourto explain the growth of species universallyby the development of individualpeculiarities.... But whilst

61Tristram, "Ornithology of NorthernAfrica" (above, n. 42), p. 428. 62 Ibid., p. 429. 63Ibid., pp. 431-432.

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it is contraryalike to sound philosophy and to Christianfaith to doubt the creationof many species by the simple exercise of Almighty volition, still, knowing thatGod ordinarilyworks by naturalmeans, it might be the presumptionof an unnecessarymiracle to assume a distinct and separate origin for many of those which we term species. We may speculate on the question for a life-time; this conclusion alone so far is certain,- that every peculiarityor difference in the living inhabitantsof each country is admirablyadapted by the wisdom of their beneficent Creatorfor the supportand preservationof species.64

Tristram'sview thatcreation by miracleis sometimes an unnecessaryhypoth- esis seems to echo Wollaston's opinion about the insects of the Madeiran islands. Tristramdoes not differentiate,as Wollastondoes, between created species and derivedvarieties, describing both as "species"- but this indicates only Tristram'slooseness of terminology (or, as Newton might put it, his "low view of species"),not an intentionalbreak with the spiritof Wollaston's work. He would have reason to regret this carelessness on the publicationof the Origin. In this conclusion, we can see just how far Tristramis from the thinkingof Darwin and Wallace on the implications of naturalselection. In the Origin, Darwin would ridicule the doctrine of special creations, and suggest that natural causes act universally. Certainly the popular naturaltheology that Tristramappeals to in the above passage would soon be subverted, if not destroyed,by Darwinand Darwinism. The Darwin-Wallacepapers concentratedon the mechanism of natural selection: once this was acceptedand understoodfully, the wider implications would be apparent.But for naturalistslike Tristram,the main interest of the papers was the principle that could explain how the slight differences between closely related forms might have come about. Tristram'suse of naturalselection was not an acceptanceof a "doctrineof transmutation,"but an attempt,like Wollaston's,to understandthe relationshipbetween varieties and species, and to strikeagainst the "species-mongers"who confused them. Tristram'suse of naturalselection, like the early criticismsof his colleagues, shows that it could be read, from the limited Darwin-Wallacepapers, as a mechanism that complementedWollaston's zoologically orthodoxtheory of the derivationof varieties from species.

64Ibid., pp. 432-433.

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Tristram on Darwin and the Origin

If Tristram'sfirst use of naturalselection was not a "conversion"to Darwin's unorthodoxviews, his subsequentreaction at the Huxley-Wilberforcedebate cannot have been a "reconversion"to orthodoxy.In any event, it was not his first reaction to the ideas contained in the Origin. Three months before the meeting of the BritishAssociation in Oxford,Tristram gave his firstpresiden- tial address to the Tyneside Field Naturalist'sSociety, in which he carefully reviewed Darwin's volume.65 After briefly describing naturalselection, he identifiedthe difference between Darwin's applicationof the mechanismand his own early response to the Darwin-Wallacepapers: I feel tempted to say a few words on this, especially, as before the publication of Mr. Darwin's work, I had expressed this opinion in a paper published in the Ibis, as to many species of birds which I should rathercall local varieties. But Mr. Darwin maintainsthat the distinction between species and varieties is an arbitraryone; and he challenges his opponents to say wherein the difference consists. That many naturalists ... have needlessly multipliedspecies, I freely own; and moreoverthat we frequentlyapply the term species, for convenience sake, to fonns which, at the same time, we are perfectly well aware are in reality only varieties. But yet I humbly conceive that the distinction may be a very real one, though we may not always be able to draw the line.66

Tristramregretted the "convenient"use his Ibis article had made of the term "species"to indicatewhat Wollastonand otherconservative naturalists would have called "varieties."67 He went on to criticize Darwin'sspecies skepticism, his assumptionof vast amounts of time, and his interpretationof the fossil record. He concluded that "in the present state of science" it was impossible to treat Darwin's theory "as proved or provable."68His review of the Origin closed with a considerationof the relationsbetween science and religion:

65 Henry Baker Tristram,"President's Address," Trans. TynesideNat. Field Club, 4 (1858- 60), 218-228. Darwin had not noted Tristram'sreference to naturalselection in the Ibis, but mentions his review of the Origin in a letter to Lyell, CCD, VIII, 170. 66Tristram,"President's Address," p. 220. 67 Tristramexpressed doubts that Galerida abyssinica, G. isabellina, and G. arenicola were good species in a letter to the Ibis, 3 (1861), 414-415. Modern ornithologists agree; these species are now classified as subspecies of Galerida cristata. R. Meinertzhagenhas claimed that "crested larks have proved a source of trinomialeffusion almost arnountingto a jest in the ornithological world" (cited in S. Keith, E. K. Urban, and C. H. Fry, The Birds of Africa (London and New York:Academic Press, 1992), IV, 100- 101). 68Tristram,"President's Address," p. 225.

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we may rest calmly assured, that however the now vexed question of the origin of species ultimately be decided by science, all proved facts will be found, like their predecessors,in perfect accordancewith Scrip- ture... . Let us then push on - let us not shrinkfrom investigatingnature in her most recondite arcana- let us state our difficulties in the broadest, frankestmanner. God's revealed, and His naturaltruth, can never be at variance: it is scientifically unphilosophical,it is theologically mischie- vous to imagine so.69

Despite the above-statedopinion, elsewhere in the same review Tristramdoes claim that science cannot explain human "moral, intellectual, or spiritual faculties,"as these are within the province of revelation.70 This sentimentcasts light on Tristram'sstrong private reaction to the famous British Association debate between Huxley and Wilberforce.The exchange of one-liners that raised their impromptudiscussion of Darwin's theory to historiographicalpreeminence was about the ape origin of man.71 Tristram's reaction to the debate may have been a reaction to the wider implications of naturalselection, which he had not seen in the Darwin-Wallacepapers. In a letter to Newton, Tristramreviled "the argumentof noise and sneers by which they put down S. Oxon and everyone who did not subscribe to the God Darwin and his prophet Huxley."72This response might be attributed to the "episcophagous"quality of Huxley's defense of Darwin, as well as to Tristram'sobjections to the naturalevolution of man. However,it is an exaggerationto assertthat Tristram was an anti-Darwinian for the rest of his life. Throughouthis subsequentwork in naturalhistory he commented on evolutionary theory; three examples suffice to show that he was more moderateand ambiguousin his views than Cohen has supposed.73

69 Ibid., pp. 227-228. 70Ibid.,p. 226. 71 The actual lines were not recorded at the time, and later accounts varied widely: see J. Vernon Jensen, "Returnto the Wilberforce-HuxleyDebate," Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 21 (1988), 161-179. 72Tristramto Newton, July 31, 1860, in Wollaston, Life of Alfred Newton (above, n. 59), pp. 121-122. 73 In additionto these threeexamples, Tristram'scomments on the historyand distributionof life include HenryBaker Tristram, "Recent Geographical and HistonrcalProgress in Zoology," Contemp.Rev., 2 (1866), 108-109, 119-125; idem, "On the Geographicaland Geological Relations of the Flora and Faunaof Palestine,"Proc. Roy. Soc., London, 16 (1867-68), 316- 319; idem, review of R. Owen's Palwontology,Contemp. Rev., 12 (1869), 132-133; idem, "The Polar Origin of Life Considered in Its Bearing on the Distributionand Migrationof Birds," Ibis, 5th ser.,5-6 (1887-88), 204-206, 236-242; idem, "Onthe Peculiaritiesof the Avifaunaof the CanaryIslands," Rep. Brit. Ass. Adv.Sci. (1889), 616; idem, "President'sAddress," Trans. Nat. Hist. Soc. Northumb.Durh. Newc., 11 (1890-94), 30-31; idem, "President'sAddress," ibid., 13 (1894-99), 412.

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First,at a British Association meeting in 1868 Tristramresponded to the Rev. Francis Orpen Morris's paper "On the Difficulties of Darwinism." Morris, a Yorkshireparson naturalist,could not believe that anyone could be taken in by Darwiniannonsense. Wallace answered Morris, and was followed by Tristram,anxious to show a differentattitude among men of the cloth. Tristram said that he "thoughtit best to make a compromisebetween the extremes of the Darwiniansand the religious party."74 Two years later,reviewing Wallace'sContributions to the TheoryofNatural Selection (1 870) in the ContemporaryReview, Tristram greeted the placement of man "triumphantlyabove the operationof ... naturalselection": Wallace, to Darwin's dismay, could not see how certain human mental and physical characteristicscould have evolved, and had to propose a supernaturalagen- cy to explain them; Tristramexpressed his belief in the divine creation of man, and credited Wallace's work with enabling naturalists"to retain this belief among with a frank and cordial acceptance of the theory of natural selection."75 Finally, in 1893 Tristramwas president of the biological section of the British Association. In his address he cited his own early application of naturalselection before the publicationof the Origin, and referredto Darwin as "our great master."76Perhaps this may explain why Poulton, writing his history three years later,did not refer to Tristramas an anti-Darwinist.

Conclusion

When Thomas Bell claimed that there had been no revolutionarydiscoveries made in 1858, he was quite right - at least as far as the gentlemen naturalists were concerned. In the one case in which the process presented in the Darwin-Wallacepapers was publicly accepted, it was absorbedinto a more conservative discussion about the properdefinition of species and varieties. The few lines at the end of the Darwin-Wallacepapers that proclaim to us their evolutionary implications and revolutionarysignificance, were understood by gentlemen naturaliststo be imaginative speculation that was not worth considering.After all, they could not agree on the significance of Wollaston's attemptedrevision of species, which was based on a very limited concep- tion of variation;they could not imagine that the implications of indefinite variation should be taken seriously. Wollaston's work on the Variationof

74Athenceum,September 19, 1868, p. 373. 75H. B. Tristram,review of Contributionto the Theoryof Natural Selection,by A. R. Wallace, Contemp.Rev., 15 (1870), 310-311. 76 H. B. Tristram,"Presidential Address to Section D," Rep. Brit. Ass. Adv. Sci. (1893), 797.

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Species provided the framework for Tristram'spioneering application of naturalselection. Tristramwas not "reconverted"to zoological orthodoxy on the publication of the Origin, or at the Huxley-Wilberforcedebate: in acceptingnatural selection before November 1859, he had never left it.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Professor M. P. Winsor, Professor Alexander Baker, CharlottedeVries, and an anonymousreferee for their helpful comments on this paper.While researchingand writing I was supportedby a Universityof TorontoOpen fellowship.

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