Complex sentence: Patrick Matthew (20 October 1790--8 June 1874) was a Scottish landowner and fruit grower who proposed the principle of natural selection as a mechanism of evolution over a quarter-century earlier than did Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.
Split into simpler sentences: Patrick Matthew (20 October 1790--8 June 1874) was a Scottish landowner and fruit farmer. He published the principle of natural selection as a mechanism of evolution over a quarter-century earlier than Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.