Canterbury Pieces | Page 5

ten years unremittingly. I hope that in three or four years more I shall be able to go on very well by myself, and then I may go back to New Zealand or no as circumstances shall seem to render advisable. I must apologise for so much detail, but hardly knew how to explain myself without it.
I always delighted in your ORIGIN OF SPECIES as soon as I saw it out in New Zealand--not as knowing anything whatsoever of natural history, but it enters into so many deeply interesting questions, or rather it suggests so many, that it thoroughly fascinated me. I therefore feel all the greater pleasure that my pamphlet should please you, however full of errors.
The first dialogue on the ORIGIN which I wrote in the PRESS called forth a contemptuous rejoinder from (I believe) the Bishop of Wellington--(please do not mention the name, though I think that at this distance of space and time I might mention it to yourself) I answered it with the enclosed, which may amuse you. I assumed another character because my dialogue was in my hearing very severely criticised by two or three whose opinion I thought worth having, and I deferred to their judgment in my next. I do not think I should do so now. I fear you will be shocked at an appeal to the periodicals mentioned in my letter, but they form a very staple article of bush diet, and we used to get a good deal of superficial knowledge out of them. I feared to go in too heavy on the side of the ORIGIN, because I thought that, having said my say as well as I could, I had better now take a less impassioned tone; but I was really exceedingly angry.
Please do not trouble yourself to answer this, and believe me,
Yours most sincerely, S. Butler.
This elicited a second letter from Darwin:-
Down, Bromley, Kent. October 6.
My dear Sir,--I thank you sincerely for your kind and frank letter, which has interested me greatly. What a singular and varied career you have already run. Did you keep any journal or notes in New Zealand? For it strikes me that with your rare powers of writing you might make a very interesting work descriptive of a colonist's life in New Zealand.
I return your printed letter, which you might like to keep. It has amused me, especially the part in which you criticise yourself. To appreciate the letter fully I ought to have read the bishop's letter, which seems to have been very rich.
You tell me not to answer your note, but I could not resist the wish to thank you for your letter.
With every good wish, believe me, my dear Sir,
Yours sincerely, Ch. Darwin.
It is curious that in this correspondence Darwin makes no reference to the fact that he had already had in his possession a copy of Butler's dialogue and had endeavoured to induce the editor of an English periodical to reprint it. It is possible that we have not here the whole of the correspondence which passed between Darwin and Butler at this period, and this theory is supported by the fact that Butler seems to take for granted that Darwin knew all about the appearance of the original dialogue on the ORIGIN OF SPECIES in the PRESS.
Enough, however, has been given to explain the correspondence which the publication of the dialogue occasioned. I do not know what authority Butler had for supposing that Charles John Abraham, Bishop of Wellington, was the author of the article entitled "Barrel- Organs," and the "Savoyard" of the subsequent controversy. However, at that time Butler was deep in the counsels of the PRESS, and he may have received private information on the subject. Butler's own reappearance over the initials A. M. is sufficiently explained in his letter to Darwin.
It is worth observing that Butler appears in the dialogue and ensuing correspondence in a character very different from that which he was later to assume. Here we have him as an ardent supporter of Charles Darwin, and adopting a contemptuous tone with regard to the claims of Erasmus Darwin to have sown the seed which was afterwards raised to maturity by his grandson. It would be interesting to know if it was this correspondence that first turned Butler's attention seriously to the works of the older evolutionists and ultimately led to the production of EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW, in which the indebtedness of Charles Darwin to Erasmus Darwin, Buffon and Lamarck is demonstrated with such compelling force.

DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES: A Dialogue [From the Press, 20 December, 1862.]

F. So you have finished Darwin? Well, how did you like him?
C. You cannot expect me to like him. He is so hard and logical, and he treats his subject with such an