Samuel Butler: A Sketch | Page 7

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 brass clocks of the thirteenth century. Then comes the question: Who will be man's successor? To which the answer is: We are ourselves creating our own successors. Man will become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to man; the conclusion being that machines are, or are becoming, animate.
In 1863 Butler's family published in his name 'A First Year in Canterbury Settlement', which, as the preface states, was compiled from his letters home, his journal and extracts from two papers contributed to the 'Eagle'. These two papers had appeared in the 'Eagle' as three articles entitled "Our Emigrant" and signed "Cellarius." The proof-sheets of the book went out to New Zealand for correction