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,
On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection of science on which they bear". Years later, Darwin could only recall one review; Professor Haughton of Dublin claimed that "all that was new in them was false, and what was true was old." Despite illness, Darwin pressed on with writing the "abstract" of his "big book" on "Natural Selection"; this condensed version was published in November 1859 as "On the Origin of Species". In a largely overlooked passage from Wallace's essay, he says of the evolutionary principle: The action of this principle is exactly like that of the centrifugal governor of the steam engine, which checks and corrects any