MR. FRANK BUCKLAND. 815 



sickness. He returned to London, and soon afterward became house- 

 surgeon at St. George's. He used to say that the cases which were 

 brought into the accident ward grouped themselves into classes accord- 

 ing to the hours of the day. The suicides came at an early hour of 

 the morning ; the scaffold accidents next, since a scaffold, if it gave^ 

 way at all, gave way early in the day ; the street accidents afterward, 

 and so on. At St. George's he collected a fund of good stories, with 

 which he used to amuse his friends to the last days of his life. One 

 of the best of them told, as he never minded his stories telling, against 

 himself. An old woman came to the hospital with a cough, which 

 she declared nothing would alleviate except some sweet, luscious mix- 

 ture which another out-patient, a friend of hers, had received. The 

 old woman was given a bottlef ul of the mixture, and returned again 

 and again for more, though her cough got little better. At last Mr. 

 Buckland's suspicions were aroused, and he desired that his patient 

 should be watched. She was watched, and was found outside Chelsea 

 Hospital selling the mixture in halfpenny tarts. 



In 1854, while he was still engaged at St. George's, he was offered 

 and accepted the post of assistant-surgeon in the Second Life Guards. 

 Perhaps no army surgeon ever enjoyed so much popularity among his 

 brother-officers. The friends whom he made during his nine years 

 with the regiment remained his friends to the day of his death ; and, 

 whenever any of them happened to meet him, Mr. Buckland had an 

 endless store of anecdotes of his old Life Guards days. The nine years 

 during which he served with the regiment were probably the happiest 

 of his life. He left it on the surgeoncy falling vacant, and on finding 

 that the rules of the service necessitated his own supercession by the 

 transfer from another regiment of another surgeon. But during the 

 nine years through which he had served his name had become famous. 

 His contributions to the " Field " newspaper and his " Curiosities of 

 Natural History " had made natural history popular in thousands of 

 households ; and the exertions which he had already commenced in 

 the cause of fish-culture had marked him as a man with an idea. Thus 

 he left the army a known man, and during the next few years relied 

 on his pen. Unfortunately, he was unable to continue contributing to 

 the paper which he had been instrumental in originating. Differences 

 arose between himself and the conductors of the "Field," and Mr. 

 Buckland, separating himself from his fellow-laborers, founded " Land 

 and Water." It is not too much to say that the latter periodical was 

 indebted to his pen for its existence and reputation. 



A neAV sphere was, in the mean while, preparing for Mr. Buckland's 

 energies. In 1861 Parliament had sanctioned the appointment of two 

 Inspectors of Fisheries for England and Wales. One of these gentle- 

 men, ISIr. Eden, retired in broken health in 1867, and Mr. Buckland 

 was chosen as his successor. He had hardly been appointed when his 

 colleague, Mr. Ffennell, died, and another gentleman had to be chosen 



