Butler’s other two contributions to the _Press_ mentioned above do contain the germs of the machine chapters in _Erewhon_, and led him to the theory put forward in _Life and Habit_. In 1901 he wrote in the preface to the new and revised edition of _Erewhon_: “The first part of _Erewhon_ written was an article headed _Darwin among the Machines_ and signed ‘Cellarius.’ It was written in the Upper Rangitata district of Canterbury Province (as it then was) of New Zealand, and appeared at Christchurch in the _Press_ newspaper, June 13, 1863. A copy of this article is indexed under my books in the British Museum catalogue.”
The article is in the form of a letter, and the copy spoken of by Butler, as indexed under his name in the British Museum, being defective, the reprint which appeared in the jubilee number of the _Press_ has been used in completing the version which follows.
Further on in the preface to the 1901 edition of _Erewhon_ he writes: “A second article on the same subject as the one just referred to appeared in the _Press_ shortly after the first, but I have no copy. It treated machines from a different point of view and was the basis of pp. 270–274 of the present edition of _Erewhon_. This view ultimately led me to the theory I put forward in _Life and Habit_, published in November, 1877. { 41} I have put a bare outline of this theory (which I believe to be quite sound) into the mouth of an Erewhonian professor in Chapter XXVII of this book.”
This second article was _Lucubratio Ebria_, and was sent by Butler from England to the editor of the _Press_ in 1865, with a letter from which this is an extract:
“I send you an article which you can give to FitzGerald or not, just as you think it most expedient—for him. Is not the subject worked out, and are not the Canterbury people tired of Darwinism? For me—is it an article to my credit? I do not send it to FitzGerald because I am sure he would put it into the paper. . . . I know the undue lenience which he lends to my performances, and believe you to be the sterner critic of the two. That there are some good things in it you will, I think, feel; but I am almost sure that considering _usque ad nauseam_ etc., you will think it had better not appear. . . . I think you and he will like that sentence: ‘There was a moral government of the world before man came into it.’ There is hardly a sentence in it written without deliberation; but I need hardly say that it was done upon tea, not upon whiskey . . .