Darwinian Agriculture: How Understanding Evolution Can Improve Agriculture

refreshing change from astronomy where apparently the Copernican Revolution has passed him by—but when you start talking about “missing links” to suggest that the fossil record is a metaphor for the problems confronting a consulting detective, I remain unconvinced. I suppose if I do have a specific criticism, it is that Richter does not pay enough attention to non-Darwinian evolutionary themes. One of the most interesting books of the genre is Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh with its recapitulatory themes, non-Darwinian but very evolutionary. This gets no mention. Even more surprising is that Jack London goes unmentioned. However, in compensation there is some discussion of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes. So as an aficionado of this kind of pulp fiction, let me end by recommending Literature after Darwin to others with a like taste for getting away from the pompous and staid and plunging into the delightfully unedifying world of popular entertainment.