Samuel Butler: A Sketch | Page 7

kept in
the colony and destroyed, gives a glimpse of one side of his life there;
he preserved the note because it recalled New Zealand so vividly.
April, 1861. It is Sunday. We rose later than usual. There are five of us
sleeping in the hut. I sleep in a bunk on one side of the fire; Mr. Haast,
{3} a German who is making a geological survey of the province,
sleeps upon the opposite one; my bullock-driver and hut-keeper have
two bunks at the far end of the hut, along the wall, while my shepherd
lies in the loft among the tea and sugar and flour. It was a fine morning,
and we turned out about seven o'clock.
The usual mutton and bread for breakfast with a pudding made of flour
and water baked in the camp oven after a joint of meat--Yorkshire
pudding, but without eggs. While we were at breakfast a robin perched
on the table and sat there a good while pecking at the sugar. We went
on breakfasting with little heed to the robin, and the robin went on

pecking with little heed to us. After breakfast Pey, my bullock-driver,
went to fetch the horses up from a spot about two miles down the river,
where they often run; we wanted to go pig- hunting.
I go into the garden and gather a few peascods for seed till the horses
should come up. Then Cook, the shepherd, says that a fire has sprung
up on the other side of the river. Who could have lit it? Probably
someone who had intended coming to my place on the preceding
evening and has missed his way, for there is no track of any sort
between here and Phillips's. In a quarter of an hour he lit another fire
lower down, and by that time, the horses having come up, Haast and
myself--remembering how Dr. Sinclair had just been drowned so near
the same spot--think it safer to ride over to him and put him across the
river. The river was very low and so clear that we could see every stone.
On getting to the river-bed we lit a fire and did the same on leaving it;
our tracks would guide anyone over the intervening ground.
Besides his occupation with the sheep, he found time to play the piano,
to read and to write. In the library of St. John's College, Cambridge, are
two copies of the Greek Testament, very fully annotated by him at the
University and in the colony. He also read the 'Origin of Species',
which, as everyone knows, was published in 1859. He became "one of
Mr. Darwin's many enthusiastic admirers, and wrote a philosophic
dialogue (the most offensive form, except poetry and books of travel
into supposed unknown countries, that even literature can assume)
upon the 'Origin of Species'" ('Unconscious Memory', close of
Chapter I
). This dialogue, unsigned, was printed in the 'Press', Canterbury, New
Zealand, on 20th December, 1862. A copy of the paper was sent to
Charles Darwin, who forwarded it to a, presumably, English editor with
a letter, now in the Canterbury Museum, New Zealand, speaking of the
dialogue as "remarkable from its spirit and from giving so clear and
accurate an account of Mr. D's theory." It is possible that Butler himself
sent the newspaper containing his dialogue to Mr. Darwin; if so he did
not disclose his name, for Darwin says in his letter that he does not
know who the author was. Butler was closely connected with the 'Press',
which was founded by James Edward FitzGerald, the first
Superintendent of the Province, in May, 1861; he frequently

contributed to its pages, and once, during FitzGerald's absence, had
charge of it for a short time, though he was never its actual editor. The
'Press' reprinted the dialogue and the correspondence which followed
its original appearance on 8th June, 1912.
On 13th June, 1863, the 'Press' printed a letter by Butler signed
"Cellarius" and headed "Darwin among the Machines," reprinted in
'The Note-Books of Samuel Butler' (1912). The letter begins:
"Sir: There are few things of which the present generation is more
justly proud than of the wonderful improvements which are daily
taking place in all sorts of mechanical appliances"; and goes on to say
that, as the vegetable kingdom was developed from the mineral, and as
the animal kingdom supervened upon the vegetable, "so now, in the last
few ages, an entirely new kingdom has sprung up of which we as yet
have only seen what will one day be considered the antediluvian types
of the race." He then speaks of the minute members which compose the
beautiful and intelligent little animal which we call the watch, and of
how it has gradually been evolved from the clumsy