264 



ing, in fact, without appearing either to desire it or to know it, an 

 immense popularity." 



The REV. WILLIAM BUCKLAND, D.D., F.R.S., F.G.S. &c., 

 Dean of Westminster and Reader in Mineralogy and Geology in the 

 University of Oxford, was born in the year 1 784, at Axminster in 

 Devonshire. In 1797 he was at Tiverton School; in 1798 he en- 

 tered St. Mary's College, Winchester, and passed from it in 1801, 

 to a scholarship in Corpus Christi College, Oxford. 



Admitted Fellow of that College in 1808, he manifested a decided 

 taste for the study of geology, then beginning to be heard of in Ox- 

 ford in the lectures of Dr. KIDD, the respected Professor of Minera- 

 logy, and beginning to be cultivated in London by the founders of 

 the Geological Society. While yet a child, his attention had been 

 caught by the * Cornua Ammonis,' found in the rocks round his 

 home ; at Winchester he began to collect the sponges and other 

 fossils of the Chalk ; at Oxford he gathered the shells of the Oolite, 

 and discussed points of natural history on the ascent of Shotover Hill 

 with his frequent companion Mr. Broderip of Oriel College, who had 

 himself drawn no small amount of knowledge of these subjects from 

 the Rev. J. Townsend, the friend and fellow-labourer of William 

 Smith. The fruits of his first walk with Mr. Broderip formed the 

 nucleus of that large collection which forty years later he placed in 

 the Oxford Museum. 



In the period from 1808 to 1812, Mr. Buckland was frequently 

 seen traversing on horseback a large part of the south-western districts 

 of England, and collecting from these tracts, which had been the 

 scene of Mr. Smith's earlier labours, sections of the strata and groups 

 of their organic contents. 



In 1810 and 1811 he visited with the same purpose the north of 

 England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. 



In 1813 he received the Professorship of Mineralogy in conse- 

 quence of the resignation of Dr. Kidd ; he became a Fellow of the 

 Geological Society, and took his place among the most active and 

 most eminent of the inquirers into the physical history of the earth. 

 The lectures which he now delivered were not confined to mineralogy, 

 but embraced the discoveries and doctrines of geology, and they 



