6 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCKLAND. 
[CH. I. 
College, Oxford. He thus makes known his election in 
a letter written to his father on May 13th: “I am happy 
to inform you that I have just been elected the Senior 
Scholar for Devonshire, after a course of many days’ 
rigorous examination against eight competitors.” His 
interests were already turning in the direction of geology. 
“ In my early residence at Oxford,” he says himself, “ I took 
my first lesson in field geology in a walk to Shotover Hill 
with Mr. Broderip, who knew much of fossil shells and 
sponges from Mr. Townsend, the friend and fellow-labourer 
of William Smith, ‘ the Father of English Geology.’ The 
fruits of my first walk with Mr. Broderip formed the 
nucleus of my collection for my own cabinet, which in forty 
years expanded into the large amount which I have placed 
in the Oxford Geological Museum.” 
But although his special bent was, even in his under¬ 
graduate days, thus strongly developed, he did not neglect 
the necessary studies of the University. In 1804 he took 
his degree of B.A. He did not take honours, as there were 
no class examinations in those days ; but he nevertheless 
distinguished himself, for in a letter to his uncle he says : 
“Before I came out of the schools they told me I had 
passed extremely well, and after the Liceats were given 
out they came up to me in the quadrangle, and said they 
were extremely sorry they had not publicly thanked me 
in the schools, but that I had passed a most creditable 
examination.” 
His scholarship at Corpus, eked out by the income 
derived from pupils, supported him for the next few years. 
Meanwhile he was free to follow the course of studies in 
