8 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that he always turned it into Latin ; and within a fortnight of his 

 death he was discussing a passage of a Greek play with one of the 

 accomplished medical men who attended him, interesting himself about 

 the different pronunciation of ancient and modern Greek and the 

 merits of Greek accentuation. Mathematics were not supposed to 

 form a necessary part of a boy's education forty years ago, and it may 

 be doubted whether even his dread of his uncle's ferule or the disci- 

 pline at Winchester could have induced him to make any progress in 

 the study. To the end of his life he always regarded it as a providen- 

 tial circumstance that nature had given him eight fingers and two 

 thumbs, as the arrangement had enabled him* to count as far as ten. 

 When he was engaged on long inspections, which involved the expen- 

 diture of a good deal of money, he always carried it in small paper 

 parcels, each containing ten sovereigns ; and, though he was fond of 

 quoting the figures which his secretary prepared for him in his reports, 

 those who knew him best doubted whether they expressed any clear 

 meaning to him. He liked, for instance, to state the number of eggs 

 which various kinds of fish produced, but he never rounded off the 

 calculations which his secretary made to enable him to do so. The 

 unit at the end of the sum was, in his eyes, of equal importance to 

 the figure, which represented millions, at the beginning of it. 



Of Mr. Buckland's Christchurch days many good stories are told. 

 Almost every one has heard of the bear which he kept at his rooms, 

 of its misdemeanors, and of its rustication. Less familiar, perhaps, is 

 the story of his fii'st journey by the Great Western. The dons, 

 alarmed at the possible consequences of a railway to London, would 

 not allow Brunei to bring the line nearer than Didcot. Dean Buck- 

 land in vain protested against the folly of this decision, and the line 

 was kept out of harm's way at Didcot. But, the very day on which 

 it was opened, Mr. Frank Buckland, with one or two other under- 

 graduates, drove over to Didcot, traveled up to London, and returned 

 in time to fulfill all the regulations of the university. The Dean, who 

 was probably not altogether displeased at the joke, told the story to 

 his friends who had prided themselves on keeping the line from Ox- 

 ford. "Here," he said, "you have deprived us of the advantages of a 

 railway, and my son has been up to London." 



It was probably no easy task to select a profession for a young man 

 who had already distinguished himself by an eccentric love for ani- 

 mals, which had induced him to keep a bear at Oxford and a vulture 

 at the deanery at Westminster. At his father's wish, Mr. Buckland 

 decided on entering the medical profession. To qualify himself for 

 his duties, he studied in Germany, at Paris, and at St. George's Hos- 

 pital. While he was at Paris the cholera was raging, and the patients 

 who died of it in hospital were allotted to the Anatomical School. 

 Mr. Buckland, howevdr, had the stoutest of nerves and the strongest 

 of constitutions, and never contracted any illness during the year of 



