In 1860 Samuel Butler, a young Englishman later famous as a novelist, sailed into Lyttelton harbor with the Bible and The Origin of Species in his baggage, leaving far behind an angry clergyman father and the Anglican Establishment. Within two years, Butler, now a high-country farmer, began enlightening New Zealanders on the merits of Darwin's theory. His first article, published in The Press of Christchurch, presented a dialogue between free thinker “F,” an ardent Darwinian speaking for Butler himself, and “C,” a devout and simple-minded Christian, who found evolution “horrid” and “utterly subversive of Christianity.” Free thinker attempted to enlighten Christian by pointing out that illustrations of evolution could be observed everywhere in New Zealand. For example, the competition within a population of wild cats on sheep stations such as Butler's own Mesopotamia illustrated Darwin's struggle for life. Competing with one another for a diminishing supply of quail, only the fittest cats survived.

The Reverend C. J. Abraham, the Anglican bishop of Wellington, writing under a pseudonym, picked up the gauntlet that Butler had thrown down. As far as he was concerned, the Origin of Species, which he had recently read, simply rehashed the speculations of earlier writers such as Erasmus Darwin. “Were it not for their supposed effect upon religion,” Abraham declared, “no one would waste his time in reading about the possibility of polar bears swimming about and catching flies so long that they at last get the fins they wish for.”