Editing Patrick Matthew (section)

{{Short description|Scottish grain merchant, fruit farmer, forester, and landowner}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}
{{EngvarB|date=August 2014}}
{{POV|date=October 2023}}
{{Too much detail|date=October 2023}}
{{Infobox person
| name               = Patrick Matthew
| image              = Patrick Matthew 1790.jpg
| birth_date         = {{Birth date|1790|10|20|df=y}}
| birth_place        = Near [[Scone Palace|Scone Palace, Perthshire, Scotland]], [[Kingdom of Great Britain]]
| death_date         = {{Death date and age|1874|06|08|1790|10|20|df=y}}
| burial_place       = [[Errol, Perth and Kinross|Errol, Perth and Kinross, Scotland]], [[United Kingdom]]
| education          = [[University of Edinburgh]]
| known_for          = Early evolutionary theory
| spouse             = {{Marriage|Christian Nicol |1817}}
| children           = 8
}}

'''Patrick Matthew''' (20 October 1790 – 8 June 1874) was a Scottish [[grain trade|grain merchant]], fruit farmer, [[forester]], and landowner, who contributed to the understanding of [[horticulture]], [[silviculture]], and [[agriculture]] in general, with a focus on maintaining the British navy and feeding new colonies. He published the basic concept of [[natural selection]] as a mechanism in [[evolution]]ary adaptation and [[speciation]] ([[directional selection]]) and species constancy or stasis ([[stabilizing selection]]) in 1831 in a book called ''Naval Timber and Arboriculture'' in which he uses the phrase "the natural process of selection". He did not further publicly develop his ideas until after Darwin and Wallace published their theories of evolution by natural selection in 1859. It has been suggested that Darwin and/or Wallace had encountered Matthew's earlier work, but there is no evidence of this. After the publication of ''On the Origin of Species'', Darwin became aware of Matthew's 1831 book and subsequent editions of ''The Origin'' include an acknowledgment that Matthew "gives precisely the same view on the origin of species as that" given in the "present volume".