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 NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



The Life and Correspondence of William Buckland, D.D., 

 F.R.S., sometime Dean of Westminster, tivice President 

 of the Geological Society, and First President of the 

 British Association. By his Daughter, Mrs. Gordon. 

 8vo., pp. i — xvi; J — 288. London: John Murray. 1894. 



Dean Buckland died in August, 1856, and shortly afterwards 

 appeared a new edition of his ' Bridgewater Treatise ' (on Geology 

 considered in relation to Theology), edited by Professor Phillips. 

 Prefixed to this edition is a Memoir of him by his son, the 

 late Frank Buckland, and there is of course a notice in the 

 'Dictionary of National Biography;' but these articles do not 

 convey more than an outline of the career of this distinguished 

 man of science, and it has remained for his daughter, Mrs. 

 Gordon, to give us a much fuller account of his life and work in 

 a volume of nearly 300 pages, which is now before us. 



Dean Buckland was a very remarkable man, whose influence 

 was felt far beyond the University whose professorial chair of 

 geology he occupied ; far even beyond the limits of the British 

 Islands, as shown (in the appendix to this volume) by the long 

 list of foreign scientific societies of which he had been elected a 

 member. So many years, however, have elapsed since his death 

 that probably few persons beyond those who were personal friends 

 and acquaintances have any adequate notion of the nature of the 

 services rendered by him to posterity. 



He was an eminently practical geologist, always turning to 

 good account the scientific knowledge which he acquired. He 

 lost no opportunity of pointing out the importance of applying 

 a knowledge of Geology to the improvement of agriculture, and 

 time has shown not only that his suggestions were valuable, as 

 being founded on scientific grounds, but that many persons have 

 made fortunes by adopting them. To take the case of phosphates, 

 now so largely employed as manure : Dr. Buckland had shown 

 that the so-called coprolites found in various rocks could not be 

 anything but the fossil dung of extinct animals, as the intestinal 

 marks were still visible. It was argued from this that they ought 



