Born 17th December 1826, at Christ Church College, Oxford, was educated at Winchester and Christ Church and after five years studying medicine at St. George’s Hospital, London, was assistant surgeon to the 2nd Life Guards (1854–63). From his boyhood a zealous naturalist, he contributed largely to the Times, Field, Queen, and Land and Water, which last he started in 1866; and he was also author of “Curiosities of Natural History” (4 vols. 1857–72), “Fish-hatching” (1863), “Logbook of a Fisherman and Zoologist” (1876), “Natural History of British Fishes” (1881), and “Notes and Jottings from Animal Life” (1882). In 1867 he was appointed inspector of salmon-fisheries. In 1870 special commissioner on salmon-fisheries in Scotland, and in 1877 on the Scotch herring-fisheries. He died December 19th, 1880. See Life by G. C. Bompas (1885).

Personal

  He certainly is not at all premature; his great excellence is in his disposition, and apparently strong reasoning powers, and a most tenacious memory as to facts. He is always asking questions, and never forgets the answers he receives, if they are such as he can comprehend. If there is anything he cannot understand, or any word, he won’t go on until it has been explained to him. He is always wanting to see everything made, or to know how it is done; there is no end to his questions, and he is never happy unless he sees the relations between cause and effect.

  We first made his acquaintance in 1870, when appointed along with him to inquire into and report upon the effect of recent legislation on the Salmon Fisheries of Scotland…. At that time he was in the prime of life, somewhat under the middle height, and broad-shouldered and powerfully built, with a clever pleasant face, in which the most noticeable features were the large, dark, expressive eyes. He was about the most true and genuine man we ever met, without a particle of affectation, saying what he thought and felt simply and naturally. He learned to have a thorough enjoyment of life in all its phases; and it would have been difficult to say whether he was most at home in the polished society of a luxurious country house, or while engaged in demonstrating the anatomy of a salmon, a herring, or a lobster to a group of fishermen assembled round a fishing-boat on the beach. At that time he took but little care of himself, and thought nothing of wading across a river up to his waist, even though he could not change his wet clothes for hours afterwards; or minutely examining the structure and details of a salmon-ladder while up to his knees in water. At that period he seemed to have a wonderful amount of latent caloric, and never appeared to feel cold. He was a great smoker, and to him a pipe or a cigar was an absolute necessity of life. Yet his constant smoking never seemed to spoil his appetite or to lessen his natural vivacity and flow of spirits. On every subject, which bore upon his special study of natural history, whether connected with our inquiry or not, he took a lively interest.

  At school he certainly received his share of chastisement, and within a year or two of his death he showed some of his friends scars on his hands which he said were his uncle’s doings. He was probably a trying pupil to an impatient school-master; yet he contrived to acquire a large share of classical knowledge. He had whole passages of Virgil at his fingers’ ends. He used to say, when he could not understand an act of parliament, that he always turned it into Latin; and within a fortnight of his death he was discussing a passage of a Greek play with one of the accomplished medical men who attended him, interesting himself about the different pronunciation of ancient and modern Greek, and the merits of Greek accentuation. Mathematics were not supposed to form a necessary part of a boy’s education forty years ago and it may be doubted whether even his dread of his uncle’s ferule or the discipline at Winchester could have induced him to make any progress in the study. To the end of his life he always regarded it as a providential circumstance that nature had given him eight fingers and two thumbs, as the arrangement had enabled him to count as far as ten. When he was engaged on long inspections, which involved the expenditure of a good deal of money he always carried it in small paper parcels each containing ten sovereigns; and, though he was fond of quoting the figures which his secretary prepared for him in his reports, those who knew him best doubted whether they expressed any clear meaning to him. He liked, for instance, to state the number of eggs which various kinds of fish produced, but he never rounded off the calculations which his secretary made to enable him to do so. The unit at the end of the sum was, in his eyes, of equal importance to the figure, which represents millions, at the beginning of it.

  His personal characteristics were most attractive. No one ever met him without longing to meet him again. His simple, earnest, humorous temperament reflected itself in all he wrote, so that no one read a book by him without also determining to read the next he should publish. Thus he had an enormous number of friends and acquaintances, from the highest in the land to the giants and dwarfs, and, lower still, the waifs and strays, of human life in London. Fifty-four years seem a short span in which to break down the apathy of Englishmen to the life and sufferings of the lower animals, to instill a love of natural history among the people, and to set on foot some of the most important enterprises in the way of acclimatisation and fish culture in order to benefit the economical condition of this country. Yet it is Buckland’s merit to have succeeded in this. He was able to die with the pleasant consciousness of having made no enemies, and of having by his teaching largely increased the happiness of his fellow-men by directing them to the practical study of nature. The life of such a man well deserved to be written. Buckland was a philanthropist of no ordinary kind. He strove to augment the sum of England’s material resources, and he left men more cheerful, genial and friendly than he found them.

  We know that he was very pious. Being so, he could accept evolution neither in its Darwinian phases nor in general. Though accepting his religion through faith and belief, he was naturally sceptical, and required strong proofs for anything out of the usual way. Firmly believing in design, he accepted only objects or effects as proof, not seeing that processes might be more conclusive evidence. The trouble his mother foresaw in his volatile disposition was obviated by earnestness, industry, and a noble purpose. Few have done more in disseminating science and in making it practical. To continue his teachings he leaves an excellent reputation, his writings and his museum casts, mounted specimens, and skeletons—mainly the work of his own hands.

  Few men can now recall those unique breakfasts at Frank’s rooms in the corner of Fell’s Building; the host, in blue pea-jacket and German student’s cap blowing blasts out of a tremendous wooden horn; the various pets who made it difficult to speak or move; the marmots and the dove and the monkey and the chameleon and the snakes and the guinea-pigs; the after-breakfast visits to the eagle or the jackal or the pariah dog or Tiglath-pileser, the bear, in the little yard outside. The undergraduate was father of the man. His house in Albany Street became one of the sights of London; but to enter it presupposed iron nerves and dura ilia. Introduced to some five-and-twenty poor relations, free from shyness, deeply interested in your dress and person, you felt as if another flood were toward, and the animals parading for admission to the ark. You remained to dine: but, as in his father’s house so in his own, the genius of experiment, supreme in all departments, was nowhere so active as at the dinner table. Panther chops, rhinoceros pie, bison steak, kangaroo ham, horse’s tongue, elephant’s trunk, are reported among his manifestations of hospitality; his brother-in-law quotes from the diary of a departing guest—“Tripe for dinner; don’t like crocodile for breakfast.”

General

  In its now revised and improved form, with additional plates of organic remains, Buckland’s “Geology and Mineralogy” is the best general work on this interesting study.

  Writing, indeed, seems to have been the solace and amusement as well as the business of his life. He wrote a great deal, and easily and rapidly, not only at his office and at his house, but in railway carriages, steamboats and other public conveyances. His writings, like those of most men who have written so much and so rapidly, are unequal, but the best of them are admirable. The style is thoroughly original, and wonderfully descriptive, bringing the object or scene written about clearly and vividly before the reader’s eye; and it may safely be affirmed that no one has ever done more to render natural history popular and attractive.

  The love of fun and laughter, which was perceptible while he was transacting the dullest business, distinguished him equally as a writer. It was his object, so he himself thought, to make natural history practical; but it was his real mission to make natural history and self-culture popular. He popularised everything that he touched, he hated the scientific terms which other naturalists employed, and invariably used the simplest language for describing his meaning. His writings were unequal: some of them are not marked by any exceptional qualities. But others of them, such as the best parts of the “Curiosities of Natural History,” and “The Royal Academy Without a Catalogue” are admirable examples of good English, keen critical observation and rich humour…. The more laboured compositions which Mr. Buckland undertook did not always contain equal traits of happy humour. He was at his best when he took the least pains, and a collection of his very best pieces would deserve a permanent place in any collection of English essays.

  No more zealous, truth-loving, or painstaking man ever studied more earnestly or described more accurately the various gifts and instincts, the nature and habits of birds and beasts. A quaint vein of humour runs through his writings, which must commend them to every reader, especially to the young; and few writers have conveyed more varied and useful information.

  To trace the power of the Creator in His works, and to increase the use of His creatures to mankind, were to Frank Buckland the chief ends of natural history, and the chief purpose of his life. He was indeed slow, nay, unwilling, to admit the truth of Darwin’s teaching, and of the theory of evolution, too often represented as superseding the necessity of a Creator, and the evidence of design; and he often humourously but vehemently protested against his supposed relationship to his monkey pets. The point of this protest was against the notion that chance could produce the order of the universe, or a monkey develop itself into a man. To him, the old notion of a universe formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, was not more unreasonable, than the notion of the harmony of nature, or the structure of any beast or fish, being the result of a mere chance combination of circumstances. Each alike must beget chaos…. Those who would know Frank Buckland better should read his books, which, after all, form his best portraiture. In these, the incidents of his life, his pets, his queer companions, are made familiar, and on this thread are strung a fund of curious information and droll anecdote. These seem to talk to us in his old tones, and recall his sparkling eye and merry laugh, his restless energy, and tenderness of feeling for man and beast.

  Many naturalists have studied the habits and structure of animals with no less care and scientific judgment than he has; but, above his other qualifications, he has brought to his occupation a sympathetic insight of the feelings of dumb creatures, and has interpreted their thoughts, desires, and emotions with wonderful understanding. He has established confidential relations with monkeys, and has learned the aspirations and disappointments of the beasts of the field. When he writes about one of the creatures whose acquaintance he has made, it seems to be a revelation of private life; and the sympathy which he shows awakens similar feelings in us. The monkey is no longer a speechless brute. It becomes, through Mr. Buckland’s interpretation, a genial and intelligent fellow-being. He has done more than anyone else to make the animal world intelligible to man, and yet he is a resolute opponent of the Darwinian theory.

  Genial, sagacious, enthusiastic, always prone to look at the humorous side of the subject, Buckland aimed rather at enlisting the sympathies of others in his favourite studies than at acquiring the name of a profound writer of science.

  His various duties and his endless private work were incessant. Never careful of his health, a constitution naturally strong soon broke down, after repeated illnesses. As a writer, Buckland was lively and graphic, and as an observer, acute without being always accurate. His knowledge was more extensive than deep, and though not a great naturalist or a great author, he was a genial, kindly man, who “loved all things, both great and small,” and was himself loved in return. His enthusiasm was, moreover, infectious, and hence, by stimulating others to pursue the study of nature more scientifically than he did himself, he exerted a greater influence on the scientific world in which he moved than many more distinguished labourers.