. David Quammen writes of his "theory that turned to these arcane botanical studies – producing more than one book that was solidly empirical, discreetly evolutionary, yet a 'horrid bore' – at least partly so that the clamorous controversialists, fighting about apes and angels and souls, would leave him... alone". David Quammen, "The Brilliant Plodder" (review of Ken Thompson, "Darwin's Most Wonderful Plants: A Tour of His Botanical Legacy", University of Chicago Press, 255 pp.; Elizabeth Hennessy, "On the Backs of Tortoises: Darwin, the Galápagos, and the Fate of an Evolutionary Eden", Yale University Press, 310 pp.; Bill Jenkins, "Evolution Before Darwin: Theories of the Transmutation of Species in Edinburgh, 1804–1834", Edinburgh University Press, 222 pp.), "The New York Review of Books", vol. LXVII, no. 7 (23 April 2020), pp. 22–24. Quammen, quoted from p. 24 of his review.