42 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCK LAND. 
[CH. II. 
“ Where shall we our great Professor inter, 
That in peace may rest his bones ? 
If we hew him a rocky sepulchre, 
He’ll rise and break the stones, 
And examine each stratum that lies around, 
For he’s quite in his element underground. 
“ If with mattock and spade his body we lay 
In the common alluvial soil, 
He’ll start up and snatch those tools away 
Of his own geological toil; 
In a stratum so young the Professor disdains 
That embedded should lie his organic remains. 
“Then exposed to the drip of some case-hardening spring 
His carcase let stalactite cover, 
And to Oxford the petrified sage let us bring 
When he is encrusted all over; 
There, ’mid mammoths and crocodiles, high on a shelf, 
Let him stand as a monument raised to himself.” 
Almost at the same time when Dr. Bucldand was 
making these extensive tours in Great Britain to collect 
materials for a geological map of England, and in foreign 
countries to procure valuable and unique specimens for 
his museum, a kindred spirit was inaugurating a similar 
movement in America. A young Scotch merchant, 
William Maclure, born in Ayr, author of the “ Pioneers of 
Discovery,” went forth, with his hammer in his hand and 
his wallet on his shoulder, to make a geological survey 
of the United States. Pursuing his researches in every 
direction, often amid pathless tracts and dreary solitudes, 
he crossed and rccrosscd the Alleghany Mountains no less 
than fifty times. He encountered all the privations of 
hunger, thirst, fatigue, and exposure, month after month, 
year after year, until his indomitable spirit had conquered 
every difficulty and crowned his enterprise with success. 
