X 
PREFACE. 
In 1824, when it was formally incorporated by charter, 
Buckland became its President It was composed “ of 
robust, joyous, and independent spirits, who toiled well in 
the field, and did battle and cuffed opinions with much 
spirit and great good will/’ Murchison and Lyell were 
among the younger members. Buckland took a leading 
share in the debates of the Society and in contributing 
papers down to the middle of the century. He was one 
of the first to recognise the existence of glaciers in this 
country, and wrote a paper in 1840 on their evidences in 
Scotland and in the north of England. In the debate 
he was vigorously opposed by Murchison and Whewell, 
and equally vigorously supported by Lyell and Agassiz. 
Buckland in reply summed up the arguments, and con¬ 
demned all who dared to doubt the orthodoxy of the 
grooves and scratches of the ice-worn mountains to “ suffer 
the pains of eternal itch without the privilege of scratching.” 
This characteristic debate, following papers by Agassiz and 
Buckland, marks the beginning of the glacial controversy, 
which has divided geological opinion ever since. 
Buckland also was one of the founders of the British 
Association, and was the first President after its formal 
organisation at Oxford in 1832. 1 It was this meeting 
which made the Association an assured success. It is no 
small testimony to the high place of geology among the 
sciences at this time, that Sedgwick should have succeeded 
to the presidential chair in the following year at Cambridge. 
In the first thirty years of the century the Diluvial 
1 The first meeting was at York in the previous year, which Buckland 
was unable to attend. 
