ing, in fact, without appearing either to desire it or to know it, an immense popularity."

The REV. WILLIAM BUCKLAND, D.D., F.R.S., F.G.S. &c., Dean of Westminster and Reader in Mineralogy and Geology in the University of Oxford, was born in the year 1784, at Axminster in Devonshire. In 1797 he was at Tiverton School; in 1798 he entered St. Mary's College, Winchester, and passed from it in 1801, to a scholarship in Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Admitted Fellow of that College in 1808, he manifested a decided taste for the study of geology, then beginning to be heard of in Oxford in the lectures of Dr. KIDD, the respected Professor of Mineralogy, and beginning to be cultivated in London by the founders of the Geological Society. While yet a child, his attention had been caught by the Cornua Ammonis,' found in the rocks round his home; at Winchester he began to collect the sponges and other fossils of the Chalk; at Oxford he gathered the shells of the Oolite, and discussed points of natural history on the ascent of Shotover Hill with his frequent companion Mr. Broderip of Oriel College, who had himself drawn no small amount of knowledge of these subjects from the Rev. J. Townsend, the friend and fellow-labourer of William Smith. The fruits of his first walk with Mr. Broderip formed the nucleus of that large collection which forty years later he placed in the Oxford Museum.

In the period from 1808 to 1812, Mr. Buckland was frequently seen traversing on horseback a large part of the south-western districts of England, and collecting from these tracts, which had been the scene of Mr. Smith's earlier labours, sections of the strata and groups of their organic contents.

In 1810 and 1811 he visited with the same purpose the north of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.

In 1813 he received the Professorship of Mineralogy in consequence of the resignation of Dr. Kidd; he became a Fellow of the Geological Society, and took his place among the most active and most eminent of the inquirers into the physical history of the earth. The lectures which he now delivered were not confined to mineralogy, but embraced the discoveries and doctrines of geology, and they

attracted in a high degree the attention and admiration of the University. At length, in 1818, geology was publicly recognized in Oxford by the establishment of a Readership for this branch of science, and Buckland was appointed to the office. From this period the Reader gave annually one course of lectures on mineralogy and one on geology, sparing no pains and no expense in preparing these instructive and suggestive discourses, in which the very latest discoveries always found place.

Among his early contemporaries in Oxford none were so conspicuous in the cultivation of geology as the Rev. J. J. Conybeare and the Rev. W. D. Conybeare, both of Christ Church; and it is gratifying to remember that the strictest personal friendship united these eminent men in their subsequent brilliant career. It was in concert with W. Conybeare that Buckland gave to the press his first important paper "On the Coasts of the North of Ireland*,"-the result of a vacation tour from Oxford in 1813; and Mr. J. Conybeare was his companion in a visit to Devon and Cornwall.

In his journeys to the south-west of England he frequently called on the Rev. Benjamin Richardson of Farleigh Castle, near Bradford, and the Rev. Joseph Townsend of Pewsey, ancient friends of William Smith, and themselves among the ablest cultivators of the new views in geology. The latter of these eminent men imparted to the Oxford Professor his first knowledge of the details of superposition of the Oolite and Greensand formations between Bath and Warminster. In the year 1818 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and speedily justified his claim to this honour by communicating to the 'Transactions' his well-known account of the teeth and bones of the Elephant, Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, Hyæna, &c., discovered in Kirkdale Cave, 1821 +. This Essay was honoured by the Copley Medal, and being soon after reprinted under the title of Reliquiæ Diluvianæ,' became a powerful stimulus to the cultivation of Geology and Palæontology throughout the world. Before the issue of this remarkable work, the author had traversed France, Italy, the Tyrol, Holland, Germany, and Bohemia, bringing to the now celebrated Oxford Museum large and valuable collections, and to the geologists of England observations of phenomena then little known to them. One result of these successful labours was the election of Buckland to *Trans. Geol. Soc. vol. iii. + Phil. Trans. 1822.

4to, 1823,

the Chair of the Geological Society in 1824; and while he held this office, he received, in 1825, a valuable acknowledgement of his established merit in the gift of a Canonry of Christ Church. A more important event followed, -the happy marriage of Mr. Buckland to the excellent lady whose diligent hands and devoted affection shared every toil and lightened every anxiety of his life.

In the same year appeared, from the united hands of Buckland and Conybeare, the "Survey of the South-western Coal district of England," which even at this day may be consulted as one of the best guides to the geology of the singular country which it describes **.

In 1826 and 1827, he revisited the Continent to explore parts of France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. He then recognized the comparatively late geological date of the great upward movement of the Alps†, and declared some of the highly inclined rocks to be contemporaries of our Lias and Oolite. The Bone Caverns of Lunel and the Grotto d'Osellest then yielded to his strong arms and capacious bags many valuable spoils, now preserved in the Oxford Museum. In the five years ending with 1830, we find him presenting to the Geological Society ten memoirs relating to Continental geology, and special researches among the fossils of Portland, Lyme Regis and the Mendips, the Isle of Wight, the Isle of Purbeck, and the coast of Weymouth.

In the latter memoir he was associated with one of his most valued friends, Sir H. T. De la Beche. To this period belong many of those curious researches on Coprolites and fossil Sepiæ, which attest at once the sagacity and industry of the great explorer of ossiferous caves. In 1832 Dr. Buckland cooperated with Dr. Daubeny and some other of his friends in the preparations for the Meeting of the British Association in Oxford, and was elected President of that brilliant and important meeting. In 1836 appeared the Bridgewater Treatise, Geology and Mineralogy, considered with reference to Natural Theology,' 2 vols. 8vo; a work equally attractive and valuable to the student.

The volumes of the Geological Society subsequent to 1833 contain many valuable notices of the unwearied labours of Dr. Buckland, one of the later and more interesting being a paper on the "Glacio-Dilu† Ann. Phil. new series, i. 4, 450.

*Geol. Trans. 2nd ser. vol. i.

Geol. Soc. Proc. vol. i.

vial Phenomena in North Wales *." He was a contributor to the Linnean Society of a paper on the adaptation of Sloths to their way of life (1835); and furnished many essays and notices on special subjects of interest to the Philosophical Magazine, Silliman's Journal, the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, and the Reports of the British Association. The list published by Agassiz of the works and essays which bear the name of Buckland, extends to 66-spread over the whole period of his life in Oxford since 1813. In 1845 he became Dean of Westminster, and changed his residence, but not his habits of mental and bodily exertion. Sanitary measures, amendments in his Cathedral, agricultural improvements, the potato disease,-all occupied his attention, and consumed his time, so that from this time he almost ceased to labour as an author, though he still continued with unabated zeal the duties of his Professorship.

Dr. Buckland's numerous publications include very largely the results of personal observation, on features of physical geography, the succession of strata, the distribution of glacial detritus, the structure, habits of life, manner of death, and mode of occurrence of extinct animals. To him, more than to any geologist, are we indebted for unexpected suggestions, curious inquiries, and novel kinds of evidence. Thus in Kirkdale Cave, the peculiar condition of the broken bones-the smoothed surfaces of some-the worn aspect of others—the condition of the teeth-the layers of Stalagmite-the 'Album Græcum' -became in the mind of Buckland evidence of the mode of life and death of the former inhabitants. The footprints of Cheirotherium were joined with the ripple-mark of the rain-spot to determine the character of the mesozoic shore :-Coprolites were searched for the food of the Ichthyosaurus; snails were studied to explain holes in limestone; gelatine was extracted from the Mammoth's bones; toads were enclosed in cavities to determine their tenacity of life; the living hyæna was set to crush the bones of an ox, and thus to furnish evidence for the conviction of the old midnight robber of preglacial

caverns.

Of general views on geology, Dr. Buckland was sparing as an author, though frequently and eloquently he declared them as a Professor. Physical Geology in its higher forms had scarcely existence in the earlier part of his career. Instead of contributing to its

*Geol. Soc. Proc. vol. iii.

† Linn. Trans. vol. xvii.

progress in after-years, he laboured wisely and well in the rich field of special discovery: now collecting and describing the mighty reptiles like Plesiosaurus and Iguanodon, or the flying wonder the Pterodactylus; at another time studying the beaks of Chimæra, the wings of Neuroptera, the ink-bags of Sepiade; now questioning the great English Botanist on the reticulated stems of Cycadeoideæ, and fathoming the mind of Owen on the little Marsupialia of Stonesfield, or inviting the eagle glance of Cuvier on the serrated teeth of Megalosaurus Bucklandi.

So passed the life of this man, strong in mind and strong in body; working hard and setting others to work; gathering and giving knowledge; a patient student, a powerful teacher, a friendly associate; a valiant soldier for Geology in days when she was weak, an honoured leader in her hour of triumph.

Perhaps of all the varied marks of respect which were heaped upon him by the learned societies in all parts of the world, none yielded him higher gratification than that which threw a ray of splendour over his latest appearance at the meetings of the Geological Society. For there, in February 1848, he received from the hands of Sir H. T. De la Beche, with very appropriate expressions, the Wollaston Medal, which is the highest mark of honour known in Geological Sciencean honour which would, doubtless, long before have been paid to him, but for the frequency of his election to office in that Society*. In the reply of Dr. Buckland to the Address of the President, we find expressions such as could only be uttered by a geologist convinced of the grand destiny of his science, and conscious of his own right to be remembered among the authors of "discoveries whose names are inscribed on the annals of the physical history of the globe." And these are followed by words which embody a humble confession of the comparative littleness and incompleteness of all human knowledge—words too prophetic of the approaching close of his own valuable and honourable career,—for within two short years that apparently indefatigable mind ceased from its labours, and only the form of Buckland survived till the 15th of August, 1856.

DR. WILLIAM FREDERICK CHAMBERS died of paralysis in December 1855, aged 69 years. Prior to his retirement from active * He was President for the second time in 1840-1841.