den 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