34 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



" Burchell's Zebra" was named out of compliment), to procure 

 for him a living animal; and after some difficulty and delay, this 

 was done. The beast was sent to England, and was kept first at 

 Exeter Change, and subsequently at the Surrey Zoological 

 Gardens. On offering him bones of oxen, similar to those found 

 at Kirkdale but taken from recently-killed animals, Dr. Buckland 

 found that they were gnawed and cracked by him precisely in the 

 same way. He cracked the marrow-bones, and refused the bones 

 which contained no marrow, exactly as did his ancestors ages 

 before him in the wilds of Yorkshire. So wonderfully alike were 

 these bones in their fracture that, judging from this point alone, 

 it was impossible to say which bone had been cracked by the 

 living Hyaena and which by the aboriginal of Kirkdale. 



This Hyaena would have been killed in the cause of Science 

 for the purpose of examining his skull, but the skull of a young 

 Hyaena having been procured from another source, it was found 

 on comparison that Dr. Buckland's views were correct. 



Another ingenious experiment was that which he made with a 

 view to determine the species of an unknown animal whose foot- 

 prints only were visible on a slab of sandstone which had been 

 sent to him from Scotland for examination. After some reflec- 

 tion, it occurred to him that these footprints resembled in some 

 respects the impressions which might be made by the feet of a 

 Tortoise. Acting at once on the impulse of the moment, he 

 called his wife to come down and make some paste, while he went 

 out to search for and bring in a living Tortoise from the garden. 

 On his return he found the kitchen table covered with paste, upon 

 which the Tortoise was placed, when to his great delight he found 

 his suspicions confirmed. In its attempts to escape, the animal 

 made tracks which were comparable to those which were im- 

 bedded by some remote ancestor on the block of sandstone. 



Facts like these, expounded in his own peculiar manner, 

 always earnest and enthusiastic, carried conviction with them, 

 and made his lectures extremely popular. His auditors caught 

 his enthusiasm, and the study of geology became the fashion. 



The popularity of the British Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science, of which after its formal inauguration at 

 Oxford he was elected President, is said to have been due in a 

 great measure to his untiring industry and the spirit which he 

 infused into the undertaking. As observed by Prof. Boyd 



