PREFACE. 
vii 
Westminster in his later years. Most men cease to be 
interesting after they have gained their success in life. 
Buckland was full of interest to the end. 
Buckland graduated with distinction at Corpus Christi 
College, Oxford, in 1804, in the golden days long before 
honours and class-lists were dreamt of. Five years later 
he was ordained and elected Fellow. As a boy he had 
taken a keen interest in the rocks and fossils of his 
Devonshire home, and at Winchester, where he was at 
school, and, early on his arrival at Oxford, had fallen 
under the influence of William Smith, “the Father 
of English Geology.” He took his first lesson in field 
geology from one of William Smith’s friends. The fruits 
of this walk to Shotover formed the nucleus of the collection 
which ultimately expanded into the present Geological 
Museum. There was in those days nothing of the nature 
of a Museum in Oxford, excepting the miscellaneous 
collection of curiosities and antiquities founded by Elias 
Ashmole. Buckland turned his rooms into a museum, 
and Murchison has graphically described him sitting in 
the only empty chair, in his black gown, cleaning out 
a fossil bone from its matrix, and surrounded by rocks, 
shells, and bones in dire confusion. Academical dress, 
it must be noted, was then worn in walks into the country 
even as far as Shotover. 
In 1813 he was appointed Reader in Mineralogy, and 
his influence as a lecturer was so strongly felt that five 
years later the Readership of Geology was created for 
him in the University, in the very year when Sedgwick was 
appointed to the old-established Woodwardian Professor- 
