SOURCE: “Erasmus Darwin,” in Erasmus Darwin and the Romantic Poets, Macmillan, 1986, pp. 4-34.

In the following excerpt, King-Hele provides a brief overview of Darwin's works.

… It is in biology, however, that Darwin is best known as a scientist, for his ideas on biological evolution (as we now call it) recorded in Zoonomia (1794). He had been convinced of the truth of evolution for more than twenty years and he argues confidently. He first points out the great changes produced in animals naturally, ‘as in the production of the butterfly with painted wings from the crawling caterpillar; or of the respiring frog from the subnatant tadpole’; and also ‘by artificial or accidental cultivation, as in horses, which we have exercised for the different purposes of strength or swiftness, in carrying burthens or running races’ (Zoonomia i 504). He notes that monstrosities, or mutations as we should now say, are often inherited...