WOMEN AS INSPIRERS 



375 



in writing the book which I now have the honor of editing, 

 my mother sat up night after night, for weeks and months 

 consecutively, writing to my father's dictation; and this 

 often until the sun's rays, shining through the shutters at 

 early morn, warned the husband to cease from thinking 

 and the wife to rest her weary hand. 



"Not only with the pen did she render material assist- 

 ance, but her natural talent in the use of her pencil en- 

 abled her to give accurate illustrations and finished draw- 

 ings, many of which are perpetuated in Dr. Buckland's 

 works. She was also particularly clever and neat in mend- 

 ing broken fossils. There are many specimens in the Ox- 

 ford Museum, now exhibiting their natural forms and 

 beauty, which were restored by her perseverance to shape 

 from a mass of broken and almost comminuted fragments. 

 It was her occupation also to label the specimens, which 

 she did in a particularly neat way; and there is hardly a 

 fossil or a bone in the Oxford Museum which has not her 

 handwriting upon it. 



"Notwithstanding her devotion to her husband's pur- 

 suits, she did not neglect the education of her children, but 

 occupied her mornings in superintending their instruction 

 in sound and useful knowledge. The sterling value of her 

 labors they now, in after life, fully appreciate, and feel 

 most thankful that they were blessed with so good a 

 mother." 1 



What has been said of the influence and cooperation of 

 the women already named may, with equal truth, be af- 

 firmed of numberless others of recent as well as of earlier 

 date. It is particularly true of the wife of the naturalist 

 Heller and of the great astronomer, Kepler. It is true of 

 the wife of the illustrious mathematician, the Marquis de 

 1'Hopital. She not only shared her husband's talent for 

 mathematics, but was of special assistance to him in pre- 



1 Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural 

 Theology, by William Buckland, p. xxxvi, London, 1858. 



