Patrick Matthew published the principle of natural selection as a mechanism of evolution in 1831, over a quarter-century earlier than Charles Darwin did.

However, some of his ideas were different from Darwin’s but are equally valid.
Weale further added that Darwin used detailed, methodical force of argument to convince the world of evolution by natural selection, but Matthew’s reasoning was brilliant in a different way, a concise piece of deduction that was well worth reading even today.
The study is published in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.
Source-ANI