logue is prefixed to the work. 3. An English translation of ‘De Persecutione Vandelica,’ written by Victor, bishop of Biserte or Utica, who flourished about 490. 4. A translation of the six tomes of Laurentius Surius ‘De Vitis Sanctorum.’ This is often quoted under the name of Robert (instead of Ralph) Buckland.
[Diaries of Douay College, 199, 200, 209, 220 bis, 263; Robinson's Reg. Merchant Taylors' School, i. 18; Dodd's Church Hist. ii. 385; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), ii. 105; Cat. Lib. Impress. Bibl. Bodl. (1843), i. 355; Foley's Records, vi. part ii. 172; Challoner's Missionary Priests (1843), ii. 29; Oliver's Catholic Religion in Cornwall, 254.]
BUCKLAND, WILLIAM (1784–1856), geologist, dean of Westminster, was born at Axminster in Devonshire in 1784. He was the eldest son of the Rev. Charles Buckland, rector of Templeton and Trusham. As a child he appears to have been a close observer. We hear of his attention being especially directed to the ammonites which are found in the rocks near his native town. Beyond this we know but little of Buckland's childhood. In 1797 he was at Blundell's school in Tiverton, and in 1798 he entered St. Mary's College, Winchester. The young student was interested in the sponges of the chalk and other fossils, and he began to form a collection of them.
In 1801 Buckland obtained a scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1805 he advanced to a B.A. degree, and in 1808 he was admitted a fellow of his college; he was ordained a priest in the same year. Although he never neglected his classical studies, Buckland continued to give a considerable amount of attention to natural phenomena, the mineral kingdom being his favourite field of investigation. In this pursuit he was usually associated with Mr. Broderip of Oriel College. The fruits of his first geological excursions were derived from Shotover Hill, and these formed the nucleus of the large collections which forty years later Buckland placed in the Oxford Museum. William Smith, the father of geology, was born in Oxfordshire, and he being a land surveyor was led step by step, while pursuing his vocation, to perceive that each group of strata had its own characteristic fossils. He began to publish geological maps in 1799, and with these Buckland was guided in tracing back the history of the world's mutations. From 1808 to 1812 he travelled on horseback over a large portion of the south-western district of England, collecting from those tracts which had been the scene of Smith's earliest labours the materials for geological sections and cabinets of organic remains.
In 1813 Dr. Kidd resigned his chair of mineralogy at Oxford, and Buckland was appointed his successor. In the same year he was elected a fellow of the Geological Society of London. At the instigation of the prince regent, the lords of the treasury were induced to found a readership in geology at Oxford and endow it. Buckland received this appointment, and he delivered the inaugural address on 15 May 1819. This address, which was subsequently published in 1820 under the title of ‘Vindiciæ Geologiæ,’ created a sensation, dealing as it did most judiciously with the discoveries which were then exciting some alarm.
In this year Dr. Kidd and Professor Playfair had directed attention to the Lickey Hill in Worcestershire as the possible nearest source of the siliceous pebbles which are accumulated in large masses over Warwickshire and the midland counties. The disintegration of the Lickey Rock in consequence of its brecciated structure was pointed out by Buckland, who endeavoured to show that the evidence, which the transport of these pebbles over a wide range of area afforded, bore strongly in favour of the fact of a recent deluge.
Buckland contributed in 1815 to the Geological Society of London a paper on the ‘Slate and Greenstone Rocks of Cumberland and Westmoreland,’ and in 1817 one on the ‘Plastic Clay at Reading,’ and another on the ‘Flints in Chalk.’
About this time Buckland commenced the organisation of his geological museum, which was subsequently given by him to Oxford University. His profound knowledge of palæontology, and his happy mode of explaining the difficult phenomena of geology, added to considerable natural eloquence, stimulated the salutary reaction which now set in in favour of the physical and natural sciences. In 1818 Dr. Buckland was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1821 he published in ‘Silliman's Journal’ some ‘Instructions for the Investigation of Geological Phenomena,’ which at this period was of considerable advantage. In the same year he made a careful examination of the results of the expedition to the river Macquarie, under the direction of Mr. Oxley, which enabled him to publish a memoir, in the ‘Transactions of the Geological Society,’ ‘On the Geological Strata of Madagascar.’
In 1823 Buckland published his ‘Reliquiæ Diluvianæ, or Observations on the Organic Remains attesting the Action of a Universal Deluge.’ In the ‘Philosophical
