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attracted in a high degree the attention aiid admiration of the Uni- 

 versity. At length, in 1818, geology was publicly recognized in 

 Oxford by the establishment of a Readership for this branch of 

 science, and Buckland was appointed to the office. From this period 

 the Reader gave annually one course of lectures on mineralogy and 

 one on geology, sparing no pains and no expense in preparing these 

 instructive and suggestive discourses, in which the very latest dis- 

 coveries always found place. 



Among his early contemporaries in Oxford none were so conspicu- 

 ous in the cultivation of geology as the Rev. J. J. Conybeare and the 

 Rev. W. D. Conybeare, both of Christ Church ; and it is gratifying to 

 remember that the strictest personal friendship united these eminent 

 men in their subsequent brilliant career. It was in concert with 

 W. Conybeare that Buckland gave to the press his first important 

 paper "On the Coasts of the North of Ireland*," the result of a 

 vacation tour from Oxford in 1813 ; and Mr. J. Conybeare was his 

 companion in a visit to Devon and Cornwall. 



In his journeys to the south-west of England he frequently called 

 on the Rev. Benjamin Richardson of Farleigh Castle, near Bradford, 

 and the Rev. Joseph Townsend of Pewsey, ancient friends of William 

 Smith, and themselves among the ablest cultivators of the new views 

 in geology. The latter of these eminent men imparted to the Oxford 

 Professor his first knowledge of the details of superposition of the 

 Oolite and Greensand formations between Bath and Warminster. 



In the year 1818 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and 

 speedily justified his claim to this honour by communicating to the 

 ' Transactions ' his well-known account of the teeth and bones of 

 the Eleohawt, Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, Hyaena, &c., discovered 

 in Kirkdale Cave, 1821 f. This Essay was honoured by the Copley 

 Medal, and being soon after reprinted under the title of ' Reliquiae 

 Diluvianse^,' became a powerful stimulus to the cultivation of Geology 

 and Palaeontology throughout the world. Before the issue of this 

 remarkable work, the author had traversed France, Italy, the Tyrol, 

 Holland, Germany, and Bohemia, bringing to the now celebrated 

 Oxford Museum large and valuable collections, and to the geologists 

 of England observations of phenomena then little known to them. 

 One result of these successful labours was the election of Buckland to 

 * Trans. Geol. Soc. vol. iii. t Phil. Trans. 1822. J 4to, 1823. 



