1808-1822.] 
TOUR IN FRANCE . 
37 
option of buying. The Americans would have given 
twice the sum for these valuable and unique specimens ; 
but they were purchased by the British Museum for a 
sum of several thousand pounds. 
Sir Philip Egerton’s brother, the Rev. W. H. Egerton, 
Rector of Whitchurch, Salop, writes that “ the bulk of both 
collections consisted of fossil fishes. When a slab con¬ 
taining a specimen was split in halves the two friends 
tossed up for first choice, the one half containing the 
bones of the fish—the other the impression. This was 
the case with a vast number of specimens chiefly from 
Solenhofen—the two collections being brought together 
at Kensington form a complete whole.” 
The ample vacations which Buckland enjoyed as an 
Oxford Professor enabled him to continue his geological 
tours at home and abroad. Thus in 1820 he made an 
expedition to France with his friend Conybeare. Writing 
from Lyons to Sir John Nicholl, he says :— 
“ Three days brought me from London to Paris, where my 
first business was to call on Cuvier, who after receiving me 
with the greatest cordiality, and saluting my cheeks with 
more than English familiarity, immediately made a dinner 
for me, inviting Plumboldt, Biot, Cordier, Bowditch the 
African traveller, Frederick Cuvier, and several others of 
the savants of Paris, and giving me admission to the entire 
establishment of the Jardin du Roy. I attended three 
lectures on geology by Cordier, two on entomology by La 
Traille, and three on ornithology by Geoffrey St. Hilaire. 
I admired exceedingly the French style of lecturing: the 
manner and matter were extremely good, but the classes 
as ill-looking and ungentlemanly a set of dirty vagabonds 
as ever I set eyes on, and not more numerous than my 
own at Oxford. I attended also a meeting of the Institute 
