DEAN BUCKLAND. 
51 
DEAN BUCKLAND. 
ILLIAM BUCKLAND was born at Axminster in 
1784, and died in his rectory at Islip in 1856. The 
seventy-two j^ears of his life cover the story of the 
science of geology. Escaping from the hands of 
the Vulcanists and the Neptunists when he was a youth, it 
made a new start on the firm foundation just laid by William 
Smith — “ Strata Smith,” as he was familiarly called — a civil 
engineer, who in the prosecution of his professional work deter- 
mined the succession of strata over a large part of England, and 
discovered that their age, wherever found, could be determined 
by the fossils the}^ contained. Stratigraphy and palaeontology 
ceased to be subjects of speculation, and became matters of 
observation. 
The Geological Society in these early years of the century 
drew together into helpful fellowship the men who laid on the 
foundations of “ Strata Smith ” the first courses of the noble 
science whose superstructure has been raised to an imposing 
height in these later 5^ears of the century. One of these men 
was a cheery, bustling, eloquent and humorous young man 
from Oxford — William Buckland, Fellow of Corpus, afterwards 
Reader of Mineralogy, and then Professor of Geology to the 
University. He was President of the Geological Society in 
1825, when it received its charter. Buckland early manifested 
great devotion to geology, and explored England and Wales, 
and afterwards visiting the districts on the Continent that had 
been made the subjects of special study. His first important 
work was his exploration of the Kirkdale and Dudley caverns, 
and his elaborate descriptions of the bones of the tiger, bear, 
elephant, and other animals found in the caverns which he 
published in his Reliquits Diluviana. He tested the prevailing 
notion that toads could live confined in rocks, by shutting 
up some of these animals in cells in sandstone and limestone, 
and then burying the blocks under ground. His work should 
have put an end to such tales, but alas ! a credulous public still 
listen to and accept stories of living toads enclosed for unknown 
ages in blocks of solid coal or rock. 
When the British Association held at Oxford its first regular 
meeting. Professor Buckland was elected President, and his 
genial presence in the chair, and in the various sections, helped 
to make that meeting so great a success, in the face of much 
indifference as well as active opposition. His great work 
was his Bridgewater Treatise, in which geology and mineralogy 
were considered in reference to natural theology. He main- 
* The Life and Correspondence of William Buckland, D. D., F.R.S., some- 
time Dean of Westminster, twice President of the Geological Society, and first 
President of the British Association. By his daughter, Mrs. Gordon. London : 
John Murray, 1894, 8vo., pp. 288. 
