Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/414

402 Such is a skeleton chronology of a life than which none more active, varied, and useful, is recorded in scientific biography. For the story of the lives of many men of science we have to be satisfied with a skeleton almost as meager as this; but happily that is not the case with Frank Buckland. He has, in the papers constituting his "Curiosities," and in "Land and Water," so revealed himself in his inner life, with his thoughts, feelings, and purposes, and his friends and the brother-in-law who has prepared his biography have given such vivid descriptions of him as they saw him, that the man is made to stand out before us almost as in his very life and personality.

From these sources we learn that, when weighed shortly after his birth, the infant Frank was found to be heavier than the leg of mutton provided for the family dinner of that day; and that a birch-tree was planted in honor of his arrival, the taste of the twigs of which he learned to know well. His early years, as described in his mother's journal, reflected in miniature his character in maturer life. For facts, especially of natural history, he had from childhood a most tenacious memory. At four years of age he began collecting specimens, and at seven he commenced a journal. Earlier than this, at two and a half years of age, "he would have gone through all the natural history books in the Radcliffe Library without making an error in miscalling a parrot, a duck, a kingfisher, an owl, or a vulture." When he was four years old a clergyman brought to Dr. Buckland, from a considerable distance, some "very curious fossils." They were shown to the child, who, not yet able to speak plainly, said, "They are the vertebræ of an ichthyosaurus." At three years of age his mother could get him to learn nothing by rote. His mind was always at work on what he saw, and he was very impatient of doing that which was not manifest to his senses, yet he was not considered premature. He excelled in apparently strong reasoning powers, and a most tenacious memory as to facts. He was always asking questions, and never forgot the answers he received, if they were such as he could comprehend. And he was always wanting to see everything done, or to know how it was done; and was never happy unless he could see the relation between cause and effect.

It was not surprising, as Buckland's biographer remarks, that his love of nature should grow with his growth, for it was inherited from both parents, and was encouraged by every association of his youth. "In his early home at Christ Church, besides the stuffed creatures which shared the hall with the rocking-horse, there were cages full of snakes, and of green frogs, in the dining-room, where the sideboard groaned under successive layers of fossils, and the candles stood on ichthyosauri's vertebræ. Guinea-pigs were often running over the table. In the stable-yard and large wood-house were the fox, rabbits. Guinea-pigs, and ferrets, hawks, and owls, the magpie, and the jackdaw, besides dogs, cats, and poultry, and in the garden were the tortoise