ME. FRANK BUCK LAND. 817 



overcoat stuffed with natural-history specimens of all sorts, dead and 

 alive. Among them was a monkey, which was domiciled in a large 

 inside breast-pocket. As Buckland was taking his ticket, Jocko thrust 

 up his head and attracted the attention of the booking-clerk, who im- 

 mediately (and very properly) said, " You must take a ticket for that 

 dog, if it's going with you." " Dog ? " said Buckland ; " it's no dog ; 

 it's a monkey." " It is a dog," replied the clerk. " It's a monkey," 

 retorted Buckland, and proceeded to show the whole animal, but with- 

 out convincing the clerk, who insisted on five shillings for the dog- 

 ticket to London. Nettled at this, Buckland plunged his hand into 

 another pocket and produced a tortoise, and, laying it on the sill of 

 the ticket-window, said, " Perhaps you'll call that a dog, too." The 

 clerk inspected the tortoise. " No," said he, " we make no charge for 

 them they're insects." 



If a close observer were asked to mention the chief quality which 

 Mr. Buckland developed as Inspector of Fisheries, he would probably 

 reply, a capacity for managing men. He had the happiest way of con- 

 ciliating opposition, and of carrying an even hostile audience with 

 him. It frequently occurred that the fishermen, at the many inquiries 

 which his colleague and he held, looked in the first instance with sus- 

 picion on the inspectors. They never looked with suspicion on them 

 when they went away. The ice of reserve was thawed by the warmth 

 of Mr. Buckland's genial manner ; and the men who, for the first half- 

 hour, shrank from imparting information, in the next three hours vied 

 with one another in contributing it. Mr. Buckland was equally at 

 ease with more educated audiences, though in their case he was per- 

 haps less uniformly successful. If he had been a politician, he would 

 have been a greater mob orator than Parliamentary debater. But the 

 higher classes, like the lower classes, could not resist the warmth of 

 his manner or the ring of his laughter. He could not, in the most 

 serious conversation, refrain from his joke ; and some persons will 

 recollect how on one occasion he was descanting, at a formal meeting, 

 on the advantages which would ensue from the formation of a fishery 

 district : " You will be appointed a conservator, and then you will 

 impose license duties, and the money probably three hundred pounds 

 will be paid to you." " And what shall I do then ? " " Why, then," 

 replied Mr. Buckland, " you had better bolt with it." 



His love of a joke distinguished him as a lecturer. He remembered 

 his father's lectures, and always thought it his first duty to make his 

 audience laugh ; and he had a dozen stories ready to provoke laughter. 

 The excuse of a milk-boy, on a fish being found in the milk "Please, 

 sir, mother f ox'got to strain the water " was one of those which did 

 frequent duty. The same love of a joke followed him on his official 

 inquiries. He left on one occasion a parcel of stinking fish, which he 

 had carried about with him, and forgotten, neatly done up in paper, in 

 a fashionable thoroughfare in Scotland, and stood at the hotel- window 

 VOL. XVIII. 52 



