Scientist challenges Darwin theory on NZ species

A New Zealand scientist and historian is set to explode a theory of renowned British naturalist Charles Darwin that some New Zealand native plants, insects and animals were less evolved and inferior to their English counterparts.

Darwin revolutionised the science of biology in his book the Origin of the Species.

However, Dr Ross Galbreath, who was named earlier this year as the National Library research fellow for 2003, said Darwin made a "grand generalisation" in his book "that if all the British plants were put in New Zealand they would survive and displace the natives, but if all the New Zealand plants were put in Britain they wouldn't make it.

"He drew the conclusion that the New Zealand species were lower in the evolutionary scale," he told NZPA.

Dr Galbreath is using his fellowship for research to prove that many New Zealand species thrived in Europe and the United Kingdom.

He said Darwin visited New Zealand only once for 12 days and his attitude reflected the "absolute conviction by the Brits that they were superior and all their things were superior.

"They took for granted their things and their people would prevail and the natives couldn't possibly stand up against them."

However, he said while there were a lot more British plants in New Zealand, the traffic was not entirely one way.

"What I am trying to correct is the idea that not a single New Zealand thing would make it the other way."

He said Darwin visited New Zealand in 1835 -- 24 years before he published the Origin of the Species.

Darwin's views on New Zealand species were largely based on the views of another renowned botanist of the time, his good friend Joseph Hooker, Dr Galbreath said.

Darwin spent his time in Northland and left on December 30, 1835, saying in his book the Voyage of the Beagle that he was glad to leave.

The Beagle was the 10-gun Royal Navy brig which took him on a five-year voyage around South America and the Pacific.

Darwin wrote that New Zealand was not a pleasant place.

"Amongst the natives there is absent that charming simplicity which is found in Tahiti; and the greater part of the English are the very refuse of society.

"Neither is the country itself attractive."

Darwin wrote in the Voyage of the Beagle that he visited Waimate in Northland where he observed imported species over-running native plants and animals.

"It is said that the common Norway rat, in the short space of two years, annihilated in this northern end of the island, the New Zealand species.", Darwin wrote.

"In many places I noticed several sorts of weeds, which, like the rats, I was forced to own as countrymen.

"A leek has overrun whole districts, and will prove very troublesome, but it was imported as a favour by a French vessel. The common dock is also widely disseminated, and will, I fear, for ever remain a proof of the rascality of an Englishman, who sold the seeds for those of the tobacco plant."

Dr Galbreath said he was amazed Darwin's view of New Zealand species was still "quoted as gospel" in a relatively recent book, Ecological Imperialism by American Fullbright Scholar Alfred Crosby.

"It set me thinking."

Dr Galbreath said his research had unearthed a list of nearly 200 New Zealand plants, insects, worms and animals which had survived in England and Europe.

- NZPA