MR DARWIN
(Lyrics taken from Singtastic.com   Copyright David Haines 2004)

Mister Darwin on the Beagle sailed the oceans and seas
To South America and Tahiti and New Zealand, Maldives
To Australia and Tasmania, Keeling Island and Saint Helena
To Ascension and Mauritius and Brazil, de Verdes and Galapagos Islands
Mister Darwin on the Beagle sailed away for five years

Mister Darwin on his journey watched the plants, beasts and birds
He drew pictures, gathered samples, kept a journal full of words
He saw beetles, iguanas, giant tortoises, flightless cormorants
He saw finches, frogs and lizards, duck-billed platypuses, albatrosses
Mister Darwin wondered where they came from and he soon had ideas

Mister Darwin, when he got home, wrote these new ideas down
But he didn't like to offend so didn't share them around
Twenty years passed, Mister Darwin got a letter from a Mister Wallace
Now this young man had discovered
Just the same thing Mister Darwin found
Aboard the Beagle, Mister Wallace had the self-same ideas

Mister Darwin and Mister Wallace formed a team for some time
But Mister Darwin wrote his big book in eighteen hundred and fifty-nine
"On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection"
Everybody read the book, everybody had an opinion
Some people praised it, others damned it, Mister Darwin's big book

Mister Matthew was a gardener and when he read Darwin's book
He wrote a letter to the paper saying "Just take a look
At the book I wrote nearly thirty years ago, I had all the same ideas"
No-one listened and Mister Matthew and Mister Wallace were forgotten
Over all the years and now we just remember Mister Darwin's big book

Now when you think about natural selection
Just spare a thought for those forgotten two
Remember those names, just a brief recollection
Alfred Russell Wallace and Patrick Matthew

"... I freely acknowledge that Mr. Matthew has anticipated by many years the explanation which I have offered of the origin of species, under the name of natural selection.

"I think that no one will feel surprised that neither I, nor apparently any other naturalist, had heard of Mr. Matthew's views, considering how briefly they are given, and that they appeared in the appendix to a work on Naval Timber and Arboriculture. I can do no more than offer my apologies to Mr. Matthew for my entire ignorance of his publication. If another edition of my work is called for, I will insert a notice to the foregoing effect."

Charles Darwin, Down, Bromley, Kent.

And Darwin did insert a notice, mentioning Matthew, in the second and third editions of his work.