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Samuel Butler’s letter “Darwin among the Machines” (The Press, Christchurch, 13 June 1863) says that as the vegetable kingdom developed from the mineral, and the animal supervened upon the vegetable, so in these last few ages an entirely new kingdom has sprung up, which the same paragraph names as mechanical. Copy claim link
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Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source
Date 1863-06-13 · publication Records dated 1863 → Role Earliest located Register (kind of text) Satirical Scope and limits The letter’s evolutionary analogy, read with its argument that machines are humanity’s successors; it is not biological evidence. Recorded as satirical, as the dataset’s other record of the letter is. Earliest located means the earliest text found by the collection’s searches, the cross-family re-check of 2026-11-02 and the archive retrieval of 2026-11-02, not a first statement.
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Darwin among the Machines ↗ The Press (Christchurch) · 1863-06-13
Archived copy, captured 2026-08-26: Darwin among the Machines ↗
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Source excerpt “as the vegetable kingdom was slowly developed from the mineral, and as, in like manner, the animal supervened upon the vegetable, so now in these last few ages an entirely new kingdom has sprung up” Location in source Page 1, paragraph beginning “We have used the words”, clause after “for”; image segment 3 of 6
How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher
Machine-checked · 2026-11-02
Source details and check notes Authors Cellarius (Samuel Butler) Version Papers Past article text (marked user-corrected) in the Internet Archive capture of 2026-08-26; quoted passages compared with the archived column images of the printed page (captured 2024-06-12). Papers Past returned a bot-protection page to scripted requests. A later check on 2026-10-06 verified the article text but could not retrieve the column images (HTTP 403). Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-06 Language English (en) Archive copy Open archived copy, captured 2026-08-26: Darwin among the Machines ↗ . Captured 59609 days after the recorded publication date. An archive copy shows only what the archive retrieved on 2026-08-26. It does not prove what the page said earlier, and it can differ from the copy checked on 2026-10-06.Attribution The Press (Christchurch), 13 June 1863, via Papers Past (National Library of New Zealand). Reuse Public domain (published 1863; the author died in 1902). Papers Past: no known copyright (New Zealand).. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each) under Selekoa’s quotation policy. Public-domain text. Check notes Quotation as given verbatim by the archive retrieval of 2026-11-02 (research/archive-fetch-held-2026-11-02/report.md, role 125), which read it in the raw replay of the capture of 26 August 2026 (timestamp 20260826113039; SHA-256 d1a56b294d108dbd09a5661222660a98879ddffe250520974d89d01029bac27d of the response body as served, before gzip decoding). That retrieval, by a model of another family, is the cross-family read of this passage; the session applying the decision could not reach the archive and took the passage from the report. The quoted passage was compared with the archived column images of the printed page (captured 12 June 2024), not only with the Papers Past transcription. The cross-family re-check of 2026-11-02 (review/earliest-located-recheck-2026-11-02.md, role 125) proposed this text for this proposition and role. Admitted by the maintainer’s decision of 2026-11-02. No human editorial review. Status and meaning Editorial status. Machine-checked . Machines found this record and checked it against its sources; no person accepted it individually. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.
Relation. A passage of the document meets the proposition’s criterion. The record documents what the text states, in its register (fiction and satire are labelled); it is not evidence that the proposition is true and implies no influence on or from another text.
Date. The Press (Christchurch), vol. III, issue 192, p. 1, 13 June 1863, as Papers Past’s issue record gives it; the issue masthead was not inspected.
Record ID ht-w09-butler-1863-darwin-among-the-machines