290 HEROES OF SCIENCE. 



lecture on Crustacea, given whilst he pulled to 

 pieces on his knees, a cold crab, bought at a fish- 

 monger's shop at Maidenhead, where he usually 

 lunched as the coach stopped. 



" On repairing from the Star inn to Buckland's 

 domicile, I never can forget the scene which 

 awaited me. Having, by direction of the janitor, 

 climbed up a narrow staircase, I entered a long 

 corridor-like room (now all destroyed), which was 

 filled with rocks, shells, and bones in dire confusion, 

 and, in a sort of sanctum at the end was my friend, 

 in his black gown, looking like a necromancer, sitting 

 on the sole rickety chair not covered with some fos- 

 sils, and cleaning out a fossil bone from the matrix." 



The few days spent at Oxford were memorably 

 pleasant. Buckland's wit and enthusiasm glowed 

 all his scientific sayings and doings, and he had a 

 rare power of description, by which he could make 

 even a dry enough subject fascinatingly interesting. 

 Murchison heard one or two brilliant lectures from 

 him, but what was of still more importance, he 

 accompanied the merry professor and his students, 

 mounted on Oxford hacks, to Shotover Hill, and 

 for the first time in his life had a landscape geo- 

 logically dissected before him. From that eminence 

 his eye was taught to recognize the broader features 

 of the succession of the oolitic rocks of England 

 up to the far range of the Chalk Hills, and this 

 not in a dull, text-book fashion, for Buckland, in 

 luminous language, brought the several elements 

 of the landscape into connection with each other, 



