On the Origin of Species to be expanded with his research results and published if he died prematurely. In November 1844, the anonymously published popular science book "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation", written by Scottish journalist Robert Chambers, widened public interest in the concept of transmutation of species. "Vestiges" used evidence from the fossil record and embryology to support the claim that living things had progressed from the simple to the more complex over time. But it proposed a linear progression rather than the branching common descent theory behind Darwin's work in progress, and it ignored adaptation. Darwin read it soon after publication,
Origin of the Book of Mormon them the plates of gold, and that The Book of Mormon was of divine origin - even though each of the three separated from Joseph Smith and the church they had helped him found. Before his death, Whitmer wrote: Unto all Nations, Kindreds, Tongues and People, unto whom these presents shall come: ... I wish now, standing as it were, in the very sunset of life, and in the fear of God, once [and] for all to make this public statement: That I have never at any time denied that testimony [of the Book of Mormon] or any part thereof,