SKETCH OF FRANK BUCKLAND. 403 



(on whose back the children would stand to try its strength), and toads 

 immured in various pots, to test the truth of their supposed life in 

 rock-cells." Then there were the visits to the museum, and the after- 

 noon drives, with which the bunt for some natural object was usually- 

 associated. 



At Winchester, he was known as "a boy utterly indifferent to per- 

 sonal appearance, but good-tempered and eccentric, with a small mu- 

 seum in his sleeve or cupboard," an expert hand in skinning badgers, 

 rats, etc., "and also setting wires at Blue Gate, for cats." A school- 

 fellow who slept in the next bed to him used to observe him " to get up 

 in the middle of the night, and designedly in half-darkness carefully 

 bind two fagot sticks together, for the purpose, as he said, of accus- 

 toming himself to be called up as a surgeon, half asleep, to do some 

 professional duty under adverse circumstances." So we may follow 

 him during his four years at this school, extracting the poison-fangs 

 from adders, dissecting cats, and even successfully attempting the eye 

 of the warden's dead mastiff. With his good-humor and spirits and 

 his uniform amiability and obligingness, he became the most popular 

 boy in the school. " Fond of school- work he was not, but he did his 

 duty fairly, got through his 'construes' somehow, and ground the 

 regulation grist of dreary Greek and Latin verse. Neither did he care 

 for games." Toward the end of his school-days his anatomical stud- 

 ies enlarged their scope, and he undertook fragments of humanity, 

 which he obtained secretly from the hospital and secretly dissected. 



Of his life at Oxford, Dr. Liddon observes that there hung an odor 

 of physical science about his rooms, " which increased as you got 

 nearer. If you passed through the outer room into the study, you 

 found the occupant surrounded by friends and playmates, irrational 

 or human, and deep in scientiffc investigation after his own fashion, 

 which, be it observed, was as industrious as it was irregular." His 

 fellows did not then appreciate the reality or value of the work he was 

 engaged in, " or that he was in fact educating himself much better 

 than most of us were doing." Here we find a friend visiting him at 

 his rooms having to tuck up his legs on the sofa to keep the jackal, 

 which is prowling about the room, from biting them, while the jackal 

 feasts himself upon the Guinea-pigs under the sofa ; and we are intro- 

 duced to Tiglath-pileser, or Tig, the pet bear, who attracted the notice 

 of the British Association in 1846 as a guest in cap and gown at the 

 garden-party, where he was introduced to Sir Charles Lyell, Prince 

 Canino, Milne-Edwards, and Sir T. Acland, and was mesmerized by 

 Lord Houghton. 



Buckland's first article was published in 1852, after the author had 

 attempted an unsuccessful pai>er on the muscles of the arm> Mr. 

 White Cooper, the Queen's oculist, called at the deanery, and was in- 

 vited down-stairs to see the pet rats. Frank took them out of the cage 

 one by one, and described in a most interesting way the habits and 



