43 
struggle with time, reading from morning till night, without feeling any 
want of relaxation or exercise. Itisa marvel that under sucha strain 
he lived so long, dying in the 7gth year of his age. We are not 
surprised, however, when we read that a few months before his death 
his pen suddenly fell from his paralysed hand, and his eyes lost their 
sight.” 
Of the great Whewell, a Master of talk, as of Trinity, we have 
Sydney Smith’s bon mot quoted ‘Science was his fort ; omniscience 
his foible.” 
The well known Dean Buckland too was an acquaintance of his, 
and the following anecdote concerning a visit paid to him, he 
sent me some time since in his clear hand writing. At the time, 
1887, that this was written he was evidently preparing for the 
press the “Chapters in My Life,” printed that same year for 
private circulation. 
“ One summer’s day, I think in 1844, I was surprised by a call from 
Dr. Buckland at my vicarage house, at Swaffham Bulbeck. He had 
come from Cambridge and much wanted to see the Reche Chalkpits, 
about two miles from my house ; well known in that neighbourhood 
from those pits supplying the greater part of the Clunch so generally 
used about there for building purposes. 
“ Clunch is the local name for the Lower Chalk of Geologists, which 
is well developed in those pits. After Buckland had satisfied 
his geological curiosity, we strolled into the fen close adjoining, and 
on finding some of the poor digging turf, as it is called there, the 
chief fuel used for fires—elsewhere more generally termed feat—he 
took a great interest in the matter, asking me to collect all the facts 
and circumstances connected with it, and to put them into the form 
of a paper for the British Association. This I accordingly did, 
reading a paper on the subject to the Natural History Section at the 
Cambridge meeting of the British Association in 1845.* 
“On the return walk to my vicarage, Buckland stopped short at a 
cottage in the village, where he saw some turf piled up outside the 
* See the paper entitled, ‘‘On the Turf of the Cambridgeshire Fens,” in 
the ‘‘ Report ” of the meeting for that year, Communications to Sections, p. 75- 
