all his
after life.

It was when at the age of seventeen he went to Oxford and came under the
influence of Dr Buckland that Lyell first became deeply engrossed in
geology.

Lyell used to tell many amusing stories of the oddities of his old
teacher and friend Buckland. In his lectures, both in the University and
on public platforms, Buckland would keep his audience in roars of
laughter, as he imitated what he thought to be the movements of the
iguanodon or megatherium, or, seizing the ends of his long clerical
coat-tails, would leap about to show how the pterodactyle flew. Lyell
became greatly attached to Buckland, who used to take him privately on
geological expeditions. On one of these occasions, they were dining at
an inn, where a gentleman at another table became greatly scandalised by
Buckland's conversation and manners. The professor, seeing this, became
more outrageous than ever, and on parting with Lyell for the night took
the candle and placed it between his teeth, so as to illuminate the
mouth-cavity exclaiming, 'There Lyell, practise this long enough and you
will be able to do it as well as I do.' When Buckland had retired, the
stranger revealed himself to Lyell as an old friend of his father's,
adding 'I hope you will never be seen in the company of that buffoon
again.' 'Oh! Sir,' said the startled undergraduate, 'that is my
professor at Oxford!' But Buckland did not always originate the fun, for
Lyell told me that, when the professor visited Kinnordy in his company,
he led him a long tramp under promise of showing him 'diluvium
intersected by whin dykes,' and, in the end, pointed to fields in a
boulder-clay country separated by gorse ('whin') hedges ('dykes').

Buckland, as shown by his _Vindiciae Geologicae_ (1820) and his
_Bridgewater Treatise_ (1836), was the most uncompromising of the
advocates for making all geological teaching subordinate to the literal
interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis; and in his _Reliquiae
Diluvianae_ (1823) he stoutly maintained the view that all the
superficial deposits of the globe were the result of the Noachian
deluge! He was indeed the great leader of the Catastrophists, and it is
not surprising to find Lyell, while still under his influence, scoffing
at 'the Huttonians[32].'

That Buckland greatly influenced Lyell in his youth, especially by
inoculating him with his splendid enthusiasm for geology, there can be
no doubt; and Lyell, far as he departed in af