1784-1808.] 
EARLY LIFE. 
3 
early attention to the marvels of the fossil remains of the 
organised beings which had occupied our planet in its 
earlier stages of progress, and the various strata of its 
coast in which these singular relics lie embedded. The 
town of Axminster, on the confines of Devon and Dorset, 
is situated in a valley based on that peculiar rock forma¬ 
tion, the lias, which is most rich in organic remains, and 
exhibits so many of their most striking and interesting 
forms. Axminster is within a few miles of the most 
illustrative of those coast sections exposing the structure 
and contents of that rock, and its connexion with various 
other overlying secondary deposits of oolitic and cre¬ 
taceous rocks and underlying masses of the new red 
sandstone. All these features are brought so prominently 
forward and exhibited in so close a compass, that a child 
of sagacity, growing up among them, could hardly fail 
to have its mind impressed with the elements of practical 
geology, though as yet ignorant of the science. 
“ The young Buckland could not take a stroll in the 
neighbouring fields without stumbling, at almost every 
step, on lias quarries, and finding, on ascending every 
hill, that its summit consisted of an entirely dissimilar 
formation—chcrtsand. If he extended his rambles to 
the shore at Lyme Regis or Charmouth, crowds of little 
urchins ran after him to tempt him with pretty little 
golden serpents (pyritous ammonites) or wonderful 
thunderbolts (belemnites), and he must soon have learnt 
to find for himself the situations in which these treasures 
abounded. He must have found himself able to walk 
for miles over the slabs which the lias protruded into the 
sea, without placing a foot beyond the numerous circles of 
the larger varieties of his serpent-stones, and found the 
supposed belemnites aggregated in thousands in particular 
portions of the cliff. If therefore, turning home, he 
sauntered over Lyme Cobb, his eye must have been caught 
by the rich and variously coloured panorama of the coast 
section before him. We seldom find a child brought up 
near the sea as ignorant as an inland child ; his little box 
of treasures generally is filled with various shells and 
