Abstract
MARCH 12 marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of the Rev. William Buck-land, geologist and father of the famous naturalist, Frank Buckland. William Buckland was born at Tiverton, Devonshire, on March 12, 1784. He went up to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, from Win chester in 1801 and was elected a fellow of his College in 1808. Five years later he was appointed Oxford reader in mineralogy and was elected a fellow of the Geological Society, of which body he was twice president. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1818, in which year he was appointed first professor of geology at Oxford. Upon the discovery of the Kirkdale Cave, Pickering, Yorkshire, in 1821, in which the fossil bones of numerous Tertiary animals were found, Buckland made a careful examination, and in 1822 the Royal Society awarded him its Copley medal for his account of the study of the remains found in the cave. In 1823 he supple mented his observations on Kirkdale Cave by pub lishing “Reliquiæ Diluvianæ”. A century ago he was working at his well-known Bridgewater Treatise (awarded for an essay “On the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as manifested in the creation”),“Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology”, which was published in 1836. After his appointment as Canon of Christ Church in 1825, he lived at the House for twenty years, and it was in a wall in the Canon's garden that he tested the power of toads to live when immured in rock cavities. In 1845 he was made Dean of West minster. The strain of his new work at West minster undoubtedly shortened his life, and he died and was buried at Islip in August 1856.
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Prof. William Buckland, 1784–1856. Nature 133, 353 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133353b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133353b0