i 5 « 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCKLAND. 
[CH. VI. 
in Oxford and in the world at large. In the course of 
his reply, Buckland suggested that a joint Committee 
should be formed from members of the Agricultural Society 
and of the Geological Society, in order to co-operate for 
the improvement of agriculture. 
“We all,” he said, “have to deal with one common 
parent, the Earth. It is our business, as geologists, to 
consider the history of its origin and the cause of its 
present condition ; and it is your business to operate on 
the surface, and extract from it the abundant riches with 
which Providence has stored it. From such a combination 
we may anticipate the most splendid results.” 
In the following year there was a meeting of the 
Agricultural Society at Cambridge, after the precedent 
set them by the British Association. In the hall of Trinity 
College Buckland again pointed out the great advantages 
to be derived by agriculture from the study of geology. 
In conjunction with Mr. Murchison and Mr. de la B£che, 
he also undertook a gratuitous survey for the Society ; and 
when, in March 1840, the Agricultural Society obtained a 
Royal Charter, Buckland was the first honorary member. 
In an address at one of the Society’s meetings (he 
hardly ever missed one) he said :— 
“ The scientific research for water and the scientific con¬ 
version of barren soils to fertility by the practical application 
of geology must obviously be impotent in some of their 
most fundamental points without a knowledge of the com¬ 
position of soil and structure of the earth.” 
In 1840 Dr. Buckland bought some clay land at Marsh 
Gibbon, a few miles from Oxford, in order to try practical 
experiments upon draining heavy clay soil. He used to 
