104 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCKLAND. 
[CH. IV. 
vagrant proceedings, but how much happiness and 
wisdom were gathered in these excursions ! ” 1 
The Rev. George Gaisford used sometimes to tell the 
story of his watching with Frank at the window to see 
the Dean’s (Gaisford) carriage as it passed round the 
corner of Tom Quad. The moment it was out of sight, 
he turned to Frank and cried, “ Now then, Frank, let’s 
put the crocodile into Mercury” (the pond in the middle 
of Christ Church Quadrangle, so called from a little 
stone statue of Mercury in the centre, used as a fountain). 
Mr. Ruskin writes in “ Praeterita ” :— 
“ At the corner of the great Quadrangle of Christ Church 
lived Dr. Buckland, always ready to help me,—or, a greater 
favour still, to be helped by me, in diagram drawing for his 
lectures. My picture of the granite veins in Trewavas 
Head, with a cutter weathering the point in a squall, in the 
style of Copley Fielding, still, I believe, forms part of the 
resources of the geological department ... At his breakfast- 
table I met the leading scientific men of the day, from 
Herschel downwards, and often intelligent and courteous 
foreigners. . . . Every one was at ease and amused at that 
breakfast-table,—the menu and science of it usually in 
themselves interesting. I have always regretted a day of 
unlucky engagement on which I missed a delicate toast 
of mice ; and remembered with delight being waited upon 
one hot summer morning by two graceful and polite little 
Carolina lizards, who kept off the flies.” 
“Your father the Dean,” Lord Playfair writes to Mrs. 
Gordon, “ was a born experimentalist, and I recollect 
various queer dishes which he had at his table. The 
hedgehog was a successful experiment, and both Liebig 
and I thought it good and tender. On another occasion 
1 “ Life of Frank Buckland,” pp. 8, 9. 
