FRANCIS TREVELTAN BUCKLAND. 361 



obtain cover for them. I put my hand into the 

 cage, full of tow and cotton wool; she came in- 

 stantly and took it out of my hand, and covered 

 up her young. But, notwithstanding all this care, 

 and although evidently most anxious for their wel- 

 fare, this kind mother, obeying, I suppose, some 

 wise law of nature, devoured during the following 

 night every one of the little ones of which she had 

 been so careful the preceding day." 



After being house-surgeon at St. George's Hos- 

 pital for some time, Buckland became assistant sur- 

 geon to the Second Life Guards in 1854. He had 

 already given his first lecture, "The House We 

 Live in," delivered at a Working Men's Coffee 

 House and Institute established by his mother, 

 in Westminster, London. 



About this time he was nearly fatally poisoned 

 by a cobra. He says, " I had not walked a hun- 

 dred yards before, all of a sudden, I felt just as if 

 somebody had come behind me and struck me a 

 severe blow on the head and neck, and at the same 

 time I experienced a most acute pain and sense of 

 oppression at the chest, as though a hot iron had 

 been run in and a hundred-weight put on the top of 

 it. I knew instantly, from what I had read, that I 

 was poisoned. I said as much to my friend, a most 

 intelligent gentleman, who happened to be with 

 me, and told him, if I fell, to give me brandy and 

 eau-de-luce, words which he kept repeating in case 

 he might forget them. At the same time I en- 

 joined him to keep me going, and not on any 



