Edward Blyth
Encyclopedia
Edward Blyth was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
zoologist and pharmacist
Pharmacist
Pharmacists are allied health professionals who practice in pharmacy, the field of health sciences focusing on safe and effective medication use...
. He was one of the founders of zoology in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
.
Blyth was born in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1810. In 1841 he travelled to India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
to become the curator
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
of the museum of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal
Asiatic Society
The Asiatic Society was founded by Sir William Jones on January 15, 1784 in a meeting presided over by Sir Robert Chambers, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the Fort William in Calcutta, then capital of the British Raj, to enhance and further the cause of Oriental research. At the time of...
. 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
Allan Octavian Hume
Allan Octavian Hume was a civil servant, political reformer and amateur ornithologist in British India. He was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress, a political party that was later to lead the Indian independence movement...
, Tickell
Samuel Tickell
Colonel Samuel Richard Tickell was a British army officer, artist and ornithologist in India and Burma.Tickell was born at Cuttack in India. He was educated in England, returning at the age of nineteen to join the Bengal Native Infantry. He served in Bengal until 1840, when he was made commander...
, Swinhoe
Robert Swinhoe
Robert Swinhoe FRS , was an English naturalist who worked as a Consul in Formosa. He discovered many Southeast Asian birds and several, such as Swinhoe's Pheasant, are named after him.-Biography:...
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 posthumously in 1881.
Species bearing his name include Blyth's Hawk-eagle
Blyth's Hawk-eagle
The Blyth's Hawk-Eagle, Nisaetus alboniger is a bird of prey. Like all eagles, it is in the family Accipitridae....
, Blyth's Reed Warbler
Blyth's Reed Warbler
The Blyth's Reed Warbler is an Old World warbler in the genus Acrocephalus. It breeds in temperate Asia and easternmost Europe. It is migratory, wintering in India and Sri Lanka. It is one of the most common winter warblers in those countries...
, Southern Blyth's Leaf-Warbler
Southern Blyth's Leaf-warbler
The Southern Blyth's Leaf-warbler is a species of leaf warbler . It was formerly included in the "Old World warbler" assemblage....
and Blyth's Pipit
Blyth's Pipit
The Blyth's Pipit, Anthus godlewskii, is a medium-sized passerine bird which breeds in Mongolia and neighbouring areas. It is a long distance migrant moving to open lowlands in southern Asia. It is a very rare vagrant to western Europe....
.
Early life and work
Blyth was the son of a clothierCloth merchant
Cloth merchant is, strictly speaking, like a draper, the term for any vendor of cloth. However, it is generally used for one who owned and/or ran a cloth manufacturing and/or wholesale import and/or export business in the Middle Ages or 16th and 17th centuries...
. He started working as a pharmacist, but quit in 1837 to try his luck as an author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
and editor
Copy editing
Copy editing is the work that an editor does to improve the formatting, style, and accuracy of text. Unlike general editing, copy editing might not involve changing the substance of the text. Copy refers to written or typewritten text for typesetting, printing, or publication...
. He was offered the position of curator at the museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1841. He was so poor that he needed an advance of £100 (pounds) to make the trip to Calcutta. In India, Blyth was poorly paid (the Asiatic Society did not expect to find a European curator for the salary that they could offer), with a salary of 300 pounds per year (which was unchanged for twenty years), and a house allowance of 4 pounds per month. He married in 1854, and tried to supplement his income by writing under a pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
for the Indian Sporting Review and traded live animals between India and Britain to wealthy collectors in both countries. In this venture he sought the collaboration of eminent people such as Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
and John Gould
John Gould
John Gould was an English ornithologist and bird artist. The Gould League in Australia was named after him. His identification of the birds now nicknamed "Darwin's finches" played a role in the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...
, both of whom declined these offers.
Although a curator of a museum with many responsibilities, he contributed mainly to ornithology
Ornithology
Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and the aesthetic appeal of birds...
, often forsaking other areas of work. In 1847, his employers were unhappy at his failure to produce a catalogue of the museum. Some Asiatic Society factions opposed Blyth. He complained to Richard Owen
Richard Owen
Sir Richard Owen, FRS KCB was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and palaeontologist.Owen is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria and for his outspoken opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...
in 1848:
He also found George Robert Gray, curator at the British Museum uncooperative in helping him with his ornithological research far away in India. He complained to the trustees of the museum but it was dismissed with several character references in favour of Gray including Charles Darwin.
Allan Octavian Hume
Allan Octavian Hume was a civil servant, political reformer and amateur ornithologist in British India. He was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress, a political party that was later to lead the Indian independence movement...
.
On natural selection
Edward Blyth wrote three articles on variation, discussing the effects of artificial selectionArtificial selection
Artificial selection describes intentional breeding for certain traits, or combination of traits. The term was utilized by Charles Darwin in contrast to natural selection, in which the differential reproduction of organisms with certain traits is attributed to improved survival or reproductive...
and describing the process in nature (later called natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
) as restoring organisms in the wild to their archetype
Archetype
An archetype is a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated...
(rather than forming new species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
). However, he never actually used the term "natural selection". These articles were published in The Magazine of Natural History between 1835 and 1837.
In February 1855 Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
, seeking information on variations in domesticated animals of various countries, wrote to Blyth who was "much gratified to learn that a subject in which I have always felt the deepest interest has been undertaken by one so competent to treat of it in all its bearings" and they corresponded on the subject. Blyth was among the first to recognise the significance of Wallace's
Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...
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:
- "What think you of Wallace's paper in the Ann. M. N. H. ? 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!"
There can be no doubt of Darwin's regard for Edward Blyth: in the first chapter of On the Origin of Species he wrote "Mr. Blyth, whose opinion, from his large and varied stores of knowledge, I should value more than that of almost any one, ..."
In a 1959 paper, Loren Eiseley
Loren Eiseley
Loren Eiseley was an American anthropologist, educator, philosopher, and natural science writer, who taught and published books from the 1950s through the 1970s. During this period he received more than 36 honorary degrees and was a fellow of many distinguished professional societies...
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". He also cited a number of rare words, similarities of phrasing, and the use of similar examples, which he regarded as evidence of Darwin's debt to Blyth. However, the subsequent discovery of Darwin's notebooks has "permitted the refutation of Eiseley's claims". Both Mayr
Ernst Mayr
Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist...
and Darlington interpret Blyth's view of natural selection as maintaining the type:
- "Blyth's theory was clearly one of elimination rather than selection. His principal concern is the maintenance of the perfection of the type. Blyth's thinking is decidedly that of a natural theologian..."
- "What was the work of Blyth?... Blyth attempts to show how [selection and the struggle for existence] can be used to explain, not the change of species (which he was anxious to discredit) but the stability of species in which he ardently believed."
In this negative formulation, natural selection only preserves a constant and unchangeable type or essence of created form, by eliminating extreme variations or unfit individuals that deviate too far from this essence. The formulation goes back to the ancient Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
philosopher Empedocles
Empedocles
Empedocles was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. Empedocles' philosophy is best known for being the originator of the cosmogenic theory of the four Classical elements...
, and the theologian William Paley
William Paley
William Paley was a British Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology, which made use of the watchmaker analogy .-Life:Paley was Born in Peterborough, England, and was...
set out a variation on this argument in 1802, to refute (in later pages) a claim that there had been a wide range of initial creations, with less viable forms eliminated by nature to leave the modern range of species:
- "The hypothesis teaches, that every possible variety of being hath, at one time or other, found its way into existence (by what cause or in what manner is not said), and that those which were badly formed, perished; but how or why those which survived should be cast, as we see that plants and animals are cast, into regular classes, the hypothesis does not explain; or rather the hypothesis is inconsistent with this phænomenon."
The way 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 been 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."
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
writes that Eiseley erred in failing to realize that natural selection was a common idea among biologists of the time, as part of the argument for created permanency of species. It was seen as eliminating the unfit, while some other cause created well fitted species. Darwin introduced the idea that natural selection was creative in giving direction to a process of evolutionary change in which small hereditary changes accumulate. John Wilkins indicates that Blyth considered that species had "invariable distinctions" establishing their integrity, and so was opposed to transmutation of species
Transmutation of species
Transmutation of species was a term used by Jean Baptiste Lamarck in 1809 for his theory that described the altering of one species into another, and the term is often used to describe 19th century evolutionary ideas that preceded Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection...
as if it occurred, "we should seek in vain for those constant and invariable distinctions which are found to obtain". Darwin held the opposite view, and did not read Blyth until after formulating his own theory. In contrast to Eiseley's claim that Blyth felt that Darwin had plagiarised the idea, Blyth remained a valued correspondent of Darwin's after the idea was published, and remained a strong friend of Darwin.
Return from India
Blyth returned to London on March 9, 1863 to recover from ill health. He was to get a full year's pay for this sick leave. He however had to borrow money from John Henry GurneyJohn Henry Gurney
John Henry Gurney was an English banker, amateur ornithologist, and Liberal Party politician.-Life:Gurney was the only son of Joseph John Gurney of Earlham Hall, Norwich, Norfolk. At the age of ten he was sent to a private tutor at Leytonstone near the Epping Forest, where he met Henry Doubleday,...
and continued his animal trade. Around 1865 he began to help Thomas C. Jerdon
Thomas C. Jerdon
Thomas Caverhill Jerdon was a British physician, zoologist and botanist. He is best remembered for his pioneering works on the ornithology of India...
in the writing of the Birds of India but had a mental breakdown
Mental breakdown
Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...
and had to be kept in a private asylum
History of psychiatric institutions
The story of the rise of the lunatic asylum and its gradual transformation into, and eventual replacement by, the modern psychiatric hospital, is also the story of the rise of organized, institutional psychiatry...
. He was a corresponding member of the Zoological Society and was elected an extraordinary member of the British Ornithological Union, nominated by Alfred Newton
Alfred Newton
Alfred Newton FRS was an English zoologist and ornithologist.Newton was Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Cambridge University from 1866 to 1907...
. He later took to drinking and was convicted for assaulting a cab driver. He died of heart disease in December 1873.
Other works
Blyth edited the section on 'Mammalia, Birds, and Reptiles' in the English edition of CuvierGeorges Cuvier
Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier or Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier , known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist...
's Animal Kingdom published in 1840, inserting many observations, corrections, and references of his own. His Catalogue of the mammals and birds of Burma was published posthumously in 1875.