1808-1822.] 
THE OXFORD MUSEUM. 
53 
sent him from all parts of the world. Fortunately for 
science, Dr. Buckland sent duplicate specimens to the 
British Museum. 
Professor Boyd Dawkins 1 writes respecting this once 
famous collection :— 
“In 1857 Dr. Buckland’s collection was in the old 
Clarendon Buildings, partly in upright glass cases and 
partly in drawers below. Professor Phillips let me have the 
run of them, and I spent a good deal of time in working 
at them ; they were all accessible and were mostly un¬ 
packed. They were removed to the new Museum, and the 
arrangement disturbed, so that at present the collection is 
in a state unworthy of Oxford. The Bucklandean tradition 
and name, which were maintained in Oxford down to the 
death of Phillips, are now almost unknown. The Buck¬ 
landean collections are now scarcely known as such.” 
Among the most interesting, and to his class most familiar, 
specimens which his collection contained, was the skull of 
a hyena. 
“ In the Oxford Museum,” says Frank Buckland, “ is a 
very perfect skull of one of our ancient British Cave 
Hyenas ; and my father, in his usual clever manner, often 
made it appear in his lectures (and with good reason too) 
that this skull was that of the old cannibal, Paterfamilias 
of his cave, who devoured and survived all his relations. 
The following verses were composed by one of the class 
upon ‘ The Last English Hyena ’:— 
‘‘ * High on a rock, which o’er the raging flood 
Reared its bleak crag, The Last Hyena stood. 
Beneath his paws a kindred skull was seen ; 
And he, with commons short, looked grim and lean. 
1 W. Boyd Dawkins, M.A. (Oxon.), F.S.A., F.G.S., Professor of 
Geology and Palaeontology in the Victoria University, Owens Coll., 
Manchester. 
