4 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCKLAND . 
[CH. I. 
marine curiosities, and he readily learns to discriminate 
the peculiarity of their forms ; and if he has any curiosity 
he will naturally be led to speculate on the uses of their 
several parts. This was particularly the case with 
Buckland, for both in early and in later life he was always 
distinguished by his tact in illustrating extraordinary by 
common and familiar objects.” 
When, in 1814, Mr. Conybearc was about to leave 
Oxford for a country living, William Buckland, faithful 
to his scientific interests, hoped that the Suffolk parsonage 
“ might prove to be founded on a bed of elephants.” 
Nor was it only at Axminstcr that Buckland, in his 
youthful days, found incentives to his pursuit of geological 
science. Speaking as President of the Geological Section 
of the British Association during its meeting at Bristol in 
1836, he says that in the neighbourhood of Bristol he had 
learnt a part of his geological alphabet. “ The rocks of 
this city were my geological school. They stared me in 
the face; they wooed me, and caressed me, saying at 
every turn ‘ Pray, pray be a geologist! ’ ” 
At the age of thirteen the boy was sent to an ancient 
grammar school at Tiverton, founded in the seventeenth 
century by Blundell, a cloth manufacturer. A year later 
Mr. Pole Carew, Speaker of the House of Commons, 
obtained for him from Dr. Huntingford, the Warden, a 
nomination at Winchester. His uncle, the Rev. J. Buckland, 
Rector of Warborough in Oxfordshire, and Fellow of 
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, attracted by the ability 
of his nephew, advised his father to spare no expense in 
his education. “ As William,” he writes, " appears to excel 
your other boys by many degrees in talent and industry, 
