90 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCKLAND. 
[CH. IV. 
Ihe following anecdote illustrates Buckland’s practical 
activity and ingenuity in gaining information. When the 
turrets of “Tom Tower” of Christ Church, Oxford, were 
undergoing repair during the long vacation, he had reason 
to suspect that all was not right. It was impossible for 
the Canon to ascend by the slender scaffolding to these 
turrets ; so, from the windows of his house at Christ 
Church, he bethought him of watching the masons through 
an excellent telescope, which he used to examine distant 
geological sections, etc. At last the unsuspecting mason, 
working, as he thought, far above the ken of man, put in 
a faulty bit of stone. Buckland, on the watch below, 
detected him through the telescope, and almost frightened 
the man out of his wits when, coming into the quadrangle, 
he admonished him to bring down directly “ that bad bit 
of stone he had just built into the turret.” 
The year in which he obtained his canonry was also the 
year in which he married. His wife was Mary Morland, 
the eldest daughter of Mr. Benjamin Morland, of Sheep- 
stead House, near Abingdon. The marriage took place on 
December 31st, 1825. In a letter to the Rev. W. Vernon 
Harcourt, Buckland thus announces the approaching 
event : “ I'm speedily about to follow your example in 
entering into the holy estate, and propose early in the 
beginning of the year to set off for Italy and Sicily on a 
tour of nine or ten months; if you have any commissions 
in those regions, pray send them me.” 
Mary Morland, whose mother died when she was 
only an infant, was the eldest of a large family of half- 
brothers and sisters. The greater part of her childhood 
