SURVEY REVIEW FROM THE PERIPHERY OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE Frank N. Egerton, Hewett Cottrell Watson: Victorian Plant Ecologist and Evolutionist. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003. Pp. xxvii + 283. US$84.95 HB. Michael Shermer, In Darwin’s Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xx + 422. US$35.00 HB. By Peder Anker There is a growing body of studies devoted to the role of scientists working on the periphery of the scientific canon to shed light on well-known events. The above biographies of two Victorian plant geographers illustrate this trend. There are few historical studies of Hewett Cottrell Watson, and Egerton has done a fine job of bringing to light the role of a marginal scientist in the age of the Darwinian revolution. Alfred Russel Wallace is a more familiar figure, and Shermer investigates his psychobiography with an unusual methodology. They seek respectively to investigate unfamiliar sources or to use atypical methodology in order to illuminate familiar historical ground. For the historian there is nothing like finding primary sources other historians have overlooked. It was such a finding that prompted Egerton to write this biography of Hewett Cottrell Watson (1804–1881). Watson corresponded with Charles Darwin about questions relating to evolution in the years leading up to the 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species. This raises the question of whether Watson contributed to Darwin’s work. Egerton argues that Watson was practically the first to conduct research on plant evolution, and that he presented evidence about this issue to Darwin. Darwin, however, made better use of Watson’s data than he himself did. This is only one of several incidents Egerton uses to portray Watson as a rather eccentric evolutionist, botanist and plant geographer (but not ‘ecologist’ as the subtitle misleadingly suggests). The point of departure in Egerton’s account is “a lifelong personality disorder” that afflicted Watson (p. 233). This emotional disorder generated social obstacles and problems, Metascience 12: 322–324, 2003. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.