MR. FRANK BUCK LAND ON THE VIPER. 



197 



the privilege of speaking of him in 

 his public capacity, since he is " a 

 bar in the way " the cause of un- 

 necessary trouble' in having the 

 question of the viper swallowing 

 her young admitted as a fact in 

 natural history. And he and his 

 friends can have no reason of com- 

 plaint against me for doing so, inas- 

 much as he has treated the subject 

 capriciously, and not with that 

 candour and courtesy which the 

 " sacred deposit of truth " called for. 

 My opinion, then, of him is that 

 he is a wonderfully overrated man, 

 but in high esteem in England 

 among conventional people who, 

 even although of high education 

 and intelligence, are not qualified to 

 judge him in questions of natural 

 history, or who have never heard 

 his merits discussed, or who will 

 not take the trouble to look into 

 them, and will almost resent it being 

 done by others. In reality he is, 

 for the most part, but a kind of 

 broker in natural history facts and 

 anecdotes almost every one send- 

 ing him all kinds of articles and 

 odds and ends connected with the 

 subject, of which he becomes the 

 depositary and registrar, to be re- 

 ferred to as occasion calls for. In 

 this capacity he would be a useful 

 and interesting member of socie- 

 ty, if he accurately arranged and 

 thoroughly digested his informa- 

 tion, and dealt it out correctly, 

 giving his authorities, after their 

 information had been well tested 

 and confirmed, for everything with 

 which he favoured the public, so 

 that it could always be depended 

 on. And then his labours would be 

 too multifarious to secure accuracy 

 on all occasions. In denying that 

 Charles Waterton was a scientific 

 naturalist I said that 



" A person may make all observations 

 possible on a complicated subject, and 

 yet be devoid of the capacity or mental 

 training to weave them into a theory 

 or system, that will immediately, or at 

 any time, meet with acceptance " (p. 49). 



The same may be asserted, in a 

 much greater degree, of the relation 

 in which Mr. Buckland stands to 

 natural history generally (for it is 

 almost the reverse of Waterton's), 

 whatever might be said of him as a 

 taxidermist and anatomist (the 

 labours of his own hands), or in any 

 particular department of natural 

 history that he may have practically 

 studied to advantage. Witness, for 

 example, his amazing remarks, given 

 at page 189, about a "stream of 

 viperlings, alive and active, forced 

 out of a viper by the pressure of the 

 foot," being " in the egg and not 

 yet born, but squeezed out of the 

 mouth "y and that vipers do not 

 swallow their young because cats do 

 not do it! Could a "naturalist," 

 with the overwhelming amount of 

 evidence before him, ever have 

 given expression to two such opin- 

 ions ? 



The son of, and " the successor 

 in natural science " to, the Dean of 

 Westminster, the well-known Bridge- 

 water writer, lately a surgeon in the 

 Life Guards, the natural history 

 editor of Land and Water, and the 

 leading commissioner of the fisher- 

 ies preceded by his page and secre- 

 tary Mr. Buckland presents an im- 

 posing aspect to all kinds of " poor 

 people," who would rather not 

 offend him, or the society in which 

 he figures so prominently, and far 

 less call in question his authority or 

 almost his infallibility in natural 

 history. So divided and subdivided 

 is the press, with its various spheres 

 so clearly defined, that journals 

 whose province is not natural his- 

 tory will not interfere with him in 

 disputed points, but will rather say, 

 "We leave that to Mr. Buckland." 

 Even papers on natural history seem 

 to have a delicacy in meddling with 

 him, on account of his editorial and 

 official standing, and his peculiar 

 relation to a large part of the com- 

 munity interested in the popular 

 aspects of the subject ; while natu- 

 ralists of admitted scientific reputa- 



