_It is worth observing that Butler appears in the dialogue and ensuing correspondence in a character very different from that which he was later to assume_. _Here we have him as an ardent supporter of Charles Darwin_, _and adopting a contemptuous tone with regard to the claims of Erasmus Darwin to have sown the seed which was afterwards raised to maturity by his grandson_. _It would be interesting to know if it was this correspondence that first turned Butler’s attention seriously to the works of the older evolutionists and ultimately led to the production of_ EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW, _in which the indebtedness of Charles Darwin to Erasmus Darwin_, _Buffon and Lamarck is demonstrated with such compelling force_. A Dialogue [From the _Press_, 20 December, 1862.] F. So you have finished Darwin? Well, how did you like him? C. You cannot expect me to like him. He is so hard and logical, and he treats his subject with such an intensity of dry reasoning without giving himself the loose rein for a single moment from one end of the book to the other, that I must confess I have found it a great effort to read him through. F. But I fancy that, if you are to be candid, you will admit that the fault lies rather with yourself than with the book. Your knowledge of natural history is so superficial that you are constantly baffled by terms of which you do not understand the meaning, and in which you consequently lose all interest. I admit, however, that the book is hard and laborious reading; and, moreover, that the writer appears to have predetermined from the commencement to reject all ornament, and simply to argue from beginning to end, from point to point, till he conceived that he had made his case sufficiently clear. C. I agree with you, and I do not like his book partly on that very account. He seems to have no eye but for the single point at which he is aiming. F. But is not that a great virtue in a writer? C. A great virtue, but a cold and hard one. F. In my opinion it is a grave and wise one. Moreover, I conceive that the judicial calmness which so strongly characterises the whole book, the absence of all passion, the air of extreme and anxious caution which pervades it throughout, are rather the result of training and artificially acquired self-restraint than symptoms of a cold and unimpassioned nature; at any rate, whether the lawyer-like faculty of swearing both sides of a question and attaching the full value to both is acquired or natural in Darwin’s case, you will admit that such a habit of mind is essential for any really valuable and scientific investigation. C. I admit it. Science is all head—she has no heart at all.