ABSTRACT
Having decided against a career in the Church in favour of sheep farming in New Zealand, Samuel Butler left England on 30 September 1859, just eight weeks before the publication of Darwin bicentenary's Origin of Species, which he read in New Zealand. Butler's first published response to the Origin, prior to the implications he would pursue in 'Darwin among the Machines' and 'Lucubratio Ebria', was a pseudonymous article written in 1862 for the Christchurch Press, entitled 'Darwin on the Origin of Species: A Dialogue'. However, as Butler recounts in Unconscious Memory, it was not until 1877 and 1878 that he acquainted himself with the work of the early evolutionists, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck. The unwillingness of Darwin and his supporters to enter into a public dispute with Butler in the correspondence columns of the Athenaeum led to the publication of Butler's version of events in Unconscious Memory.
