| Activity | In his day Blyth was considered one of the leading zoologists in India, and a prominent figure overall in his field. He did a bit of everything: editing, translating, report-writing, taxonomic studies, field notes, technical articles, essays, popular works, etc. From time to time he touched on biogeographic subjects, as in 1871 when he contributed a short work to Nature in which he suggested a new formulation of world zoogeographical regions. All of this is largely forgotten today, and instead he is best known for his early (1835) recognition of some of the principles of natural selection--made not only long before Darwin and Wallace went to print, but even before the former first came up with the concept. Blyth, however, did not see the ramifications of the principle (nor did anyone else), and did little to develop his thoughts any further. Later he became one of the first to embrace Darwinism, and was a vocal supporter for the remainder of his years.
1838 appointed curator of of the ornithilogical society of london, takes over as curator of of the asiatic society of bengal, calcutta 1841 - 1862, on leaving the society he returned to England and retired a year later. In 1865 he is made an honorary member of the society |