On Christmas Day, 1839, occurred the remarkable landslip at Axmouth, the extent of which, says Buckland, “far exceeds the earthquakes of Calabria, and almost the vast volcanic fissures of the Val del Bove on the flanks of Etna.” Dr. and Mrs. Buckland were both quickly on the spot, and while the Professor made careful investigations into the cause of the catastrophe, his wife, with her clever pencil, made a series of careful drawings of this curious phenomenon, from one of which the illustration on the following page is taken. Buckland at an Ashmoleam meeting thus describes the event:—

In 1825 Professor Buckland was presented by his College to the living of Stoke Charity, Hants. In July of the same year he was appointed by Lord Liverpool to a canonry at Christ Church, Oxford, and received the degree of D.D. The appointment necessitated a change of residence. He writes to the Rev. W. Vernon Harcourt on September 10th, 1825: “Many thanks for your congratulations on my appointment to Christ Church, where I find the hunting of bricklayers and carpenters for the present entirely supersedes that of crocodiles and hyenas.”

He carried with him to his new home an enthusiasm for science which was not shared by many of his colleagues. It was not long before he discovered that among the benefactions of Christ Church was one which was available for the promotion of scientific study. Dr. Lee had left a considerable property to the College for a variety of purposes, including the erection and maintenance of an Anatomical Museum. The property came into the hands of Christ Church in 1766, and in the following year the Museum was built. In the accounts of the Trust entries from time to time occur of purchases of subjects for dissection. But in 1828 Buckland discovered that a considerable sum had accumulated which might be claimed for the benefit of the Museum. In July 1828 he writes to Sir R. Murchison in great delight at his discovery.

The century now drawing to a close is remarkable beyond all others for the spirit of inquiry into the physical constitution of the earth, into the forces playing upon its surface, and into the phenomena of life, both plant and animal. The rise of the natural sciences in the modern sense may be said to date from its beginning. In this great renascence geology has borne an important part. It has opened out new and almost endless avenues of thought, giving us, on the one hand, the history of the ever-changing earth, from the remote time when it was sufficiently cool to allow of water resting upon its surface, and, on the other, the long and orderly procession of animal life beginning with the lowest invertebrate forms and ending in Man. In this latter connection it enabled Darwin to grasp the principle of evolution that now influences our view of life as a whole in the same way as the law of gravitation has affected our view of matter, not only in the earth, but also in the universe. To us, living at the end of the century, it is difficult to realise the conditions under which the pioneers lived and worked, because through their labours the conditions have wholly changed. In this short Life of Dr. Buckland, written under considerable difficulty and nearly four decades after his death, we are brought face to face with the old order of things, and we can realise how great is the evolution that has taken place since his time.

William buckland was the eldest son of the Rev. Charles Buckland, Rector of Templeton and Trusham in the county of Devon. He was born at Axminster, on the 12th of March, 1784. His mother, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Oke, was the daughter of Mr. John Oke, a landed proprietor, living at Combpyne, near Axminster, whose family had since the Stuart period occupied extensive property in that neighbourhood.

The birthplace of William Buckland was singularly adapted to develope his peculiar genius. Near his home, in the picturesque valley of the Axe, are large quarries of lias, abounding in fossil organic remains; in this same valley are also found abundant traces of a buried forest; here, too, lay embedded among the roots of the trees the bones of fossil elephants. His father (who for the last twenty-two years of his life was blind from an accident) early made his son the companion of his walks and tastes. Together they ransacked the lias quarries, collecting ammonites and other shells, which thus became familiar to the lad from his infancy. From his, childhood his innate faculties for observation were encouraged. Writing of this early period of his life to the late Sir H. de la Bêche, Dr. Buckland himself says: “The love of observing natural objects which is common to most children was early exhibited by my aptitude in finding birds' nests and collecting their eggs.

I slip, which was regarded by the family as their country home, lies on the high road between Worcester and London, seven miles from Oxford. Situated on what was formerly a great thoroughfare, it was once an active, bustling village, and is a place full of historical reminiscences. The first and most interesting of its associations with history is that it was the birthplace of Edward the Confessor, who endowed his newly founded Abbey at Westminster with his mother's birthday gift. Mr. Parker, in his “Early History of Oxford,” says:—