THE BIOLOGICAL WRITINGS OF SAMUEL 

 BUTLER AND THEIR RELATION TO 

 CONTEMPORARY AND SUBSEQUENT 

 BIOLOGICAL THOUGHT^ 



BY MARCUS HARTOG, M.A., F.L.S. 



Professor of Natural History, Queen's College, Cork 



In the reissue of Samuel Butler's works there has long been a 

 gap ; both stock and plates of Unconscious Memory had been 

 destro3^ed in an accidental fire. As it was necessary to reprint 

 the book, Mr. Streatfeild, Butler's literary executor, thought 

 that it would afford a good opportunity for an introductor}^ 

 essay by a professed biologist, dealing with Butler's biological 

 writings and his relation to biological thought during the last 

 thirt}' 3'ears ; and he requested me to undertake this work. I 

 could not refuse so honourable a task ; but no one can be more 

 humbly aware how trying it is to find one's prose in the same 

 covers as Butler's, and that too in front of it. Still, the mace- 

 bearer who walks before the Chancellor, to do him honour, 

 is yet not therefore regarded as immodest. 



Samuel Butler's Unconscious Memory itself gives an invalu- 

 able lead ; for it tells us (chaps, ii., iii.) how the author came to 

 write the " Books of the Machines" chapters in Erewhon (1872), 

 with its foreshadowing of the later theory. Life and Habit (i8yS), 

 Evolution, Old and New (1879), as well as Unconscious Memory 

 (1880) itself. His fourth book on biological theory was Luck, or 

 Cunning? (iSSyy 



Besides these books, his contributions to biology comprise 



' Written as an introduction to the reissue of Unconscious Memory and printed 

 with sHght alterations by kind permission of Mr. R. A. Streatfeild and Mr. A. C. 

 Fifield. 



^ The dates are those given by Mr. H. Festing Jones in the Chronology of 

 Butler's life prefixed to the " Extracts from the Notebooks " in the New Quarterly 

 Review. 



15 



