MR. PA TRICK MA TTHE W. 315 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



MB. PATRICK MATTHEW, MM. ^TIENNE AND ISIDORE 

 GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE, AND Mu. HERBERT SPENCER. 



THE same complaint must be made against Mr. 

 Matthew's excellent survey of the theory of evolution, 

 as against Dr. Erasmus Darwin's original exposition of 

 the same theory, namely, that it is too short. It may 

 be very true that brevity is the soul of wit, but the 

 leaders of science will generally succeed in burking 

 new-born wit, unless the brevity of its soul is found 

 compatible with a body of some bulk. 



Mr. Darwin writes thus concerning Mr. Matthew in 

 the historical sketch to which I have already more 

 than once referred. 



"In 1831 Mr. Patrick Matthew published his work on 

 'Naval Timber and Arboriculture/ in which he gives 

 precisely the same view on the origin of species as that 

 (presently to be alluded to) propounded by Mr. Wallace 

 and myself in the ' Linnean Journal,' and as that en- 

 larged in the present volume. Unfortunately the view 

 was given by Mr. Matthew very briefly, in scattered 

 passages in an appendix to a work on a different subject, 

 so that it remained unnoticed until Mr. Matthew him- 

 self drew attention to it in the ' Gardener's Chronicle ' 

 for April 7, 1860. The differences of Mr. Matthew's 



