8i6 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for the second inspectorship. The old traditions of the office were 

 thus snapped at the period of Mr. Buckland's appointment, and the 

 new inspectors, without the assistance of an experienced colleague, 

 had to map out their own policy. This is not the place to describe 

 the policy which they pursued, or the results which ensued from it. 

 It is sufficient to say that no public officer ever threw himself so heart- 

 ily into his work as Mr. Buckland. His zeal frequently led him into 

 imprudences which would have told severely on a less robust consti- 

 tution, and which, perhaps, had the effect of shortening his own life. 

 He has been known to wade up to his neck in water, and change his 

 clothes driving away from the river on the box of a fly. This was an 

 exceptional case ; but it was a common thing for him to sit for hours 

 in wet boots. He rarely wore a great-coat ; he never owned a rail- 

 way-rug ; he took a delight in cold, and frequently compared himself 

 to a polar bear, which languished in the heat and revived in the frost. 

 The pleasure which Mr. Buckland derived from cold accounted for 

 many of his eccentricities. Even in winter he wore the smallest 

 amount of clothing ; in summer he discarded almost all clothing. 

 The illustrated papers, which have published j)ortraits of him at home, 

 have given their readers a very inaccurate idea of his appearance at 

 his house in Albany Street. Those were very rare occasions on which 

 he wore a coat at home. His usual dress was a pair of trousers and a 

 flannel shirt ; he deferred putting on socks and boots till he was start- 

 ing for his office. Even on inspections he generally appeared at break- 

 fast in the same attire, and on one occasion he left a large country-house, 

 in which he was staying, with no other garments on. "While he was 

 driving in a dog-cart to the station he put on his boots, and as the train 

 was drawing up to the station, at which a deputation of country gen- 

 tlemen was awaiting him, he said with a sigh that he must begin to 

 dress. Boots were in fact his special aversion. He lost no opportu- 

 nity of kicking them off his feet. On one occasion, traveling alone 

 in a railway-carriage, he fell asleep with his feet resting on the win- 

 dow-sill. As usual, he kicked off his boots, and they fell outside the 

 carriage on the line. When he reached his destination the boots could 

 not, of course, be found, and he had to go without them to his hotel. 

 The next morning a plate-layei', examining the permanent way, came 

 upon the boots, and reported to the traffic-manager that he had found 

 a pair of gentleman's boots, but that he could not find the gentleman. 

 Some one connected with the railway recollected that Mr. Buckland 

 had been seen in the neighborhood, and, knowing his eccentricities, 

 inferred that the boots must belong to him. They were accordingly 

 sent to the Home Office, and were at once claimed. 



We have said that he rarely wore a great-coat, and when he did so 

 it was apparently more for the value of the additional pockets it con- 

 tained than for its warmth. One of his good stories turned on this. 

 He had been in France, and was returning, via Southampton, with an 



