Abstract
The importance of naturalization—the establishment of species introduced into foreign places—to the early development of Darwin’s theory of evolution deserves historical attention. Introduced and invasive European species presented Darwin with interpretive challenges during his service as naturalist on the HMS Beagle. Species naturalization and invasive species strained the geologist Charles Lyell’s creationist view of the organic world, a view which Darwin adopted during the voyage of the Beagle but came to question afterward. I suggest that these phenomena primed Darwin to question the “stability of species.” I then examine the role of introduced and invasive species in Darwin’s early theorizing and negotiation with Lyell’s ideas, recorded in his post-voyage “transmutation notebooks.” Therein, the subject was an inflection point in his contention with Lyell’s views and moreover, his theorizing on invasive species occasioned some of his earliest inklings of natural selection. Finally, I examine how naturalization was crucial to Lyell’s own eventual conversion to evolutionism. I conclude with brief reflections on the implications of this narrative for our understanding of Darwin’s reasoning, his intellectual relationship to Lyell, and the historical context that shaped his theory.
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Notes
For an overview and analysis, see Cadotte et al. (2018). In an analysis of empirical studies, Jeschke and Erhard (2018) conclude that Darwin’s naturalization hypothesis is empirically supported by studies using phylogeny to assess relatedness, but not by studies using taxonomy. For discussion of the role of biological invasion in Darwin’s mature theory, see Ludsin and Wolfe (2001).
A draft of this paper described Darwin’s transmutation research as “secret.” Per van Wyhe (2007), that is not accurate.
In addition to Lyell’s book, Darwin had at his disposal—it was in his very cabin aboard the Beagle—a state-of-the-art library. The Beagle library has been meticulously reconstructed and made available and searchable by the scholars of Darwin Online: http://darwin-online.org.uk/BeagleLibrary/Beagle_Library_Introduction.htm.
See Kohn (1980, Part I) on Darwin’s assimilation of Lyell’s biology during the voyage.
Darwin encountered two more species of dung beetles using introduced cattle manure on the remote island of St. Helena in July 1836. Apparently unsure whether the beetles were native or also introduced, he was nevertheless impressed: it was “the most extraordinary instance yet met with of transportal, or change in habits of Stercovorous insects” (Keynes 2000, p. 420; see also Keynes’ comments on p. xxi).
On the primacy of the vera causa principle to Lyell’s methodology, see Laudan (1982).
Lyell believed a species, “like an individual, cannot have two birth-places” (Lyell 1832, p. 71).
Linnaeus and Candolle were important precursors of Lyell in theorizing the “economy” or “polity” of nature and species’ “stations” in it, ideas forming a direct lineage to Darwin’s own ecological thinking and language. See Stauffer (1960), Pearce (2009), and La Vergata (2023; see especially pp. 398–99).
This passage is quoted by Keynes (2000, pp. xxii-xxiii) as an example of Darwin’s voyage notes on geographical distribution.
The observations in this paragraph are flagged by Keynes (2000, p. xx), who suggests they indicate “how, albeit subconsciously, [Darwin’s] ideas about evolution were taking shape.”
This observation was in kee** with, not in conflict with, the creationist assumption that changes under domestication are not indefinite but limited and maintained only artificially. Nevertheless, it demonstrates Darwin’s attention to introduced domestic species as test cases for the prevailing theory.
Darwin’s prediction proved right: the Falkland fox went extinct before Darwin’s own death.
Darwin himself visited only East Falkland Island. After the voyage, Darwin (1839a, p. 10) wrote that “Mr. Low, an intelligent sealer,” had assured him “that the wolves of West Falkland are invariably smaller and of a redder colour than those from the Eastern island; and this account was corroborated by the officers of the Adventure, employed in surveying the archipelago. Mr. Gray, of the British Museum, had the kindness to compare in my presence the specimens deposited there by Captain Fitzroy, but he could not detect any essential difference between them.”
Floreana.
Darwin seems initially to have believed the tortoises were not native to the Galápagos but were varieties of the giant tortoises of the islands of the Indian Ocean which had been introduced by sailors, who would store them as live provisions (Sulloway 1982b, pp. 338–339). Lawson, a Norwegian (believed by Darwin to be English) serving the government of Ecuador, was the one who informed Darwin that the tortoises’ shells vary by island (Keynes 2000, p. 291). On the historical and contemporary relationships between Darwin, the Galápagos, and conservation, see Quiroga and Sevilla (2017).
On Darwin’s Galápagos birds and their relevance to the development of his theory, see Sulloway (1982a).
Keynes (2000, p. xviii-xxii) mentions both subjects but does not explore their connection.
Transcribed and annotated in Barrett et al. 1987; transcriptions of the notebooks are also available via Darwin Online (van Wyhe 2002) at https://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/vanWyhe_notebooks.html.
I will cite the pages of the transcription by Barrett et al. (1987), followed by the respective pages of Notebooks B, C, and the earlier Red Notebook, in brackets.
According to Hallam (1998, p. 135), divine intervention was a “straw man:” creationists such as Lyell never invoked supernatural causes but considered the creative force a natural, if mysterious, agency. However, Lyell’s journals of the 1850s (Wilson 1970; see pp. 55–56, discussed in Part III of this paper), cast at least some doubt on this.
See Kohn (1980, Part II) on Darwin’s grappling with Lyell in the notebooks.
The reader should note going forward that in pre-evolutionary biology, “adaptation” meant the state of being adapted, not the process of adapting.
It also presupposed independent lineages beginning in spontaneously generated “monads,” another characteristic of Lamarck’s theory.
The Quaternary extinctions would have to remain mysterious. And so they have, although a global change in circumstance—the spread of an invasive predator, Homo sapiens—is today a favored explanation.
And as mentioned earlier, if earth’s history is uniform and directionless, then past conditions, and the extinct forms adapted to them, will one day inevitably recur. On Lyell and progress, see Hallam (1998).
On Lyell and “man’s place” in nature, see Bartholomew (1973).
It may sound contradictory to say Lyell’s theory was marked by environmental contingency when I have previously characterized it as a theory of environmental determinism. It would be beyond the scope of this footnote to fully explain why this is not a contradiction, but it should suffice to consider that one sense of “contingency” is that of causal dependence (see Beatty 2006).
I have not confirmed if Darwin ever carried out this inquiry.
Darwin summarized his dung beetle observations from the voyage in a long footnote to the Journal of Researches (1839, p. 583–584). This is one of a few places in that book where, having privately converted to transmutationism, he relegated to footnotes observations that, arguably, hinted at evolution; the most famous, and explicit, instance is on page 400.
In Tahiti, Darwin had noted the introduced Central American guava “from its abundance is noxious as a weed” (Keynes 1988, p. 366).
Darwin’s use of “aberrant” alludes to a category in quinarian classification, though Darwin had by now rejected that system. See Barrett et al. (1987, p. 262).
The notion of a “war” among plants comes from Candolle and was cited by Lyell (1832, p. 131).
In fact, Lyell contended with more than two sides: within evolutionism there were Lamarckians but also “progressionists” who viewed evolution as a manifestation of God’s develo** vision of creation, as allegorized in Genesis. The most famous progressionist work was Robert Chambers’ (1844) anonymously published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.
To Charles Lyell, 20 October [1859]. Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2507,” accessed on 30 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2507.xml.
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7.
Darwin argued this point at the end of Chapter III of the Origin (1859, pp. 77–78).
To Charles Lyell, 20 October [1859]. Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2507,” accessed on 30 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2507.xml.
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7.
From Charles Lyell, 4 October 1859. Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 3132,” accessed on 30 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-3132.xml.
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 13 (Supplement).
To Charles Lyell, 11 October [1859]. Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2503,” accessed on 30 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2503.xml.
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7.
It was well recognized, however, that the degree of successful invasions was nowhere near reciprocal between Europe and the Americas. Crosby attributes this asymmetry to the much greater degree of ecological disturbance in the Americas, caused both by recent European influence and by the earlier, Pleistocene arrival of humans, as well as to the fact that many European species were not introduced in isolation but as a “team,” in some cases even being transported together with their supporting coevolutionary mutualists (see Crosby 1986, pp. 165–170, 287–293).
To Charles Lyell, 20 October [1859]. “Letter no. 2507,” accessed on 30 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2507.xml.
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7.
My thanks to Gregory Radick (personal communication) for helpful discussion of this episode. (Any errors of interpretation are my own.)
On Lyell’s status as a “Darwinian”—and how we should interpret such categories—see Recker (1990).
See Secord (1985, p. 520) for a rich account of Darwin’s acquisition of this “body of knowledge unfamiliar to most contemporary men of science.”
On Darwin’s context of discovery see, e.g., Ruse (1981). See also Radick (2003). On Darwin and capitalist contexts, see Hodge (2009). For an overview of historiography on Darwin and Malthus as of 1985, see La Vergata (1985, pp. 953–958); for more recent work, see, e.g., Benton (1995), Hull (2005), Secord (2021).
For a modern critique of the “prevailing militaristic and combative metaphors in invasion biology,” see Larson (2005).
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Acknowledgements
My thanks to Michael Dietrich, Gregory Radick, and Sandra Mitchell for their help and useful suggestions, as well as to Dejan Makovec, Zachary Mayne, Kyra Salomon, Rose Gatfield-Jeffries, and Sloane Wesloh for their commentary and moral support. Thanks also to my generous reviewers for their excellent suggestions, and especially to reviewer number two for correcting numerous errors in this paper. I also thank Betty Smocovitis for her wonderful help editing. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my extensive use of The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online (http://darwin-online.org.uk/) and my gratitude to the scholars who have created and curated the invaluable riches therein.
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Anderson, E.B. Invasion on So Grand a Scale: Darwin, Lyell, and Invasive Species. J Hist Biol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-024-09772-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-024-09772-w