her history did
not bid us beware the habit of taking the problems and the conditions of
our own age for those of all time, the warning which the Empire gives
might alone be warning enough. From the days of Augustus down to those
of Charles V., the whole civilized world believed in its existence as a
part of the eternal fitness of things, and Christian theologians were
not behind heathen poets in declaring that when it perished the world
would perish with it. Yet the Empire is gone, and the world remains, and
hardly notes the change.

FRANCIS TREVELYAN BUCKLAND

(1826-1880)

Certainly, among the most useful of writers are the popularizers of
science; those who can describe in readable, picturesque fashion those
wonders and innumerable inhabitants of the world which the Dryasdusts
discover, but which are apt to escape the attention of idlers or of the
busy workers in other fields. Sometimes--not often--the same man unites
the capacities of a patient and accurate investigator and of an
accomplished narrator. To such men the field of enjoyment is boundless,
as is the opportunity to promote the enjoyment of others.

One of these two-sided men was Francis Trevelyan Buckland, popularly
known as "Frank" Buckland, and so called in some of his books. His
father, William Buckland,--at the time of the son's birth canon of
Christ College, Oxford, and subsequently Dean of Westminster,--was the
well-known geologist. As the father's life was devoted to the study of
the inorganic, so that of the son was absorbed in the investigation of
the organic world. He never tired of watching the habits of living
creatures of all kinds; he lived as it were in a menagerie and it is
related that his numerous callers were accustomed to the most familiar
and impertinent demonstrations on the part of his monkeys and various
other pets. He was an expert salmon-fisher, and his actual specialty was
fishes; but he could not have these about him so conveniently as some
other forms of life, and he extended his studies and specimens widely
beyond ichthyology.

Buckland was born December 17th, 1826, and died December 19th, 1880.
Brought up in a scientific atmosphere, he was all his life interested in
the same subjects. Educated as a physician and surgeon and distinguished
for his anatomical skill, his training fitted him for the careful
investigation which is necessary on the part of the biologist. He was
fortunate too in receiving in early middle li