The  Disposal and  Dispersal of  Buckland’s  Geological Collection

 Graham Stocks

This article is based on the published recollection of Francis Trevelyan Buckland (1826-80) concerning the auction of his father’s property, his father being the Reverend Dr. William Buckland, D.D.. Dean of Westminster (1784-1856). William Buckland held positions in theology and geology at Oxford University. While contributing greatly to the understanding of Earth science Buckland could not let go of certain literal biblical accounts, notably evidence for the Great Flood, which clouded his scientific analysis. Interestingly, evidence is coming to light of a flood of Biblical proportions from the Mediterranean via the Bosphorus into the basin now occupied by the Black Sea, though that is another story.

‘It is about three years ago, in 1857, that a sale took place at Stevens’ Auction Rooms, in King Street, Covent Garden, of the private collection of minerals, fossils and curiosities collected by my father …’

So begins FTB’s account. Before worrying too much about what happened to WB’s specimens, I’ll put you out of your misery and tell readers that the greater part of the Buckland Collection was bequeathed to the University of Oxford. The interesting portion of WB’s will reads as follows:

 ‘I give and bequeath to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and his successors for the time being, for the use of my successors in the said University, as Readers in Geology for the time being, all my geological specimens, minerals, models, maps and geological charts, drawings, sections and engravings connected with geology, which shall be in the Clarendon at the time of my decease.’

…which leaves us wondering what actually went to auction. William Buckland’s private collection at his home was, in his son’s words, ‘… transferred, in company with his scientific books, from the library and drawing room to the dismal, condemned cell of the Auctioneer. Specimens that had been gathered by the same hand, from the same place, hundreds of miles away from home, and which had lain side by side in the same drawer many a long year, and which had been lectured on, disputed about, and admired by crowds of the most learned of savants, including, in many instances, even the great Cuvier himself, were now to be ruthlessly torn from one another, destined never again to meet in their snug beds of cotton wool, and bedsteads of cardboard, canopied over by a gorgeous mansion of mahogany.’

William Buckland circa 1830-40

Depressing to dwell on, but where did some of the prize specimens go? Were they snapped-up by public museums or did they go into others’ private collections? One specimen was described thus by Buckland Junior: ‘A fine museum specimen of Sulphate of Strontian, on native Sulphur from Sicily. It was a mass as large as, and about the shape of, a lady’s good-sized work-box; and exhibited a natural miniature grotto extending three or four inches into the specimen, from the sides of which projected most beautiful needle-shaped crystals, in some parts nearly meeting at the centre, and all glittering and resplendent.’

There was also an impressive collection of ‘Flours and Spars from Durham, Cumberland and Derbyshire’ as well as some ‘crystallised sandstone from Fontainebleau’. These were purchased by a Mr. Tennant of The Strand for the purpose of completing the Stowe Collection, reckoned to be the finest mineral collection in England in the late 1850s.

William Buckland’s famed collection of Saurian coprolites also went under the hammer. These were the very specimens Buckland used to demonstrate the nature of the Saurian diet, part of which demonstrated cannibalism of infant Ichthyosaurs. Buckland also had a table made entirely out of coprolites, which was greatly admired by visitors, often unknowing of what they were actually admiring! Buckland junior wrote: ‘I have seen in actual use ear-rings made of polished portions of coprolites (for they are as hard as marble); and while admiring the beauty of the wearer, have made out distinctly the scales and bones of the fish which once formed the dinner of a hideous lizard, but now hang pendulous from the ears of an unconscious belle, who had evidently never heard of such things as coprolites.’

It was, in fact, William Buckland who drew attention to the fact that coprolite could be used as a valuable fertilizer. In the November 1849 issue of the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, Buckland had a paper ‘On the causes of the General presence of Phosphates in the strata of the Earth and in all fertile soils; with observations on Pseudo-Coprolites and on the possibility of converting the contents of Sewers and Cesspools into manure’ published. It’s tempting to sink to scatological humour - let’s just leave it at saying that William Buckland had a very fertile mind! In the RAS paper William Buckland wrote: 'Professor Liebig five or six years ago invited the attention of agriculturalists to the possibility of applying to the same use as bone-dust and guano, the fossil bones and coprolites which occur together in certain beds of the Lias formation. This invitation took place not many months after I had the honour of conducting him to the well-known bone bed in the lower region of the Lias at the Aust Passage Cliffs, on the left bank of the Severn, near Bristol, where two beds of Lias (each from one to two feet thick) are densely loaded with dislocated bones, and teeth and scales of extinct reptiles and fishes, interspersed abundantly with coprolites derived from animals of many kinds which seem to have converted that region into the cloaca maxima of ancient Gloucestershire at the time of the commencement of the formation of the Lias’.  Dr. Buckland had a sense of humour - the Cloaca Maxima was the main drain or sewer which served Classical Rome. Readers of this article are referred to an item in the February 2001 edition of ‘Charnia’ (pp15-16) which describes the coprolite mining in Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire.

Another interesting part of Buckland’s collection which went to auction was his collection of shells, both fossil and recent, which included ammonites. Most of these were gathered from Hordwell Cliff, Lyme Regis and various locations on the Isle of Wight. Several of the ammonites were sectioned longitudinally for comparison with similarly sectioned Nautilus shells. Dr. Buckland also had amassed an important collection of fossils from Stonesfield around Oxford. In this part of his collection there were numerous disarticulated Pterodactyl wing bones. Described by his son as the gem of the Stonesfield collection was the jaw of Phascolotherium, a small marsupial. Fortunately, this important piece of evidence of early mammalian history had been deposited in Oxford University’s Museum prior to Dr. Buckland’s death. It seems as if William Buckland never resolved the Biblical Great Flood accounts with the fossilized bones he and his contemporaries found. Maybe he hoped that the collection deposited with his old university would one day answer the theological questions he wrestled with throughout his lifetime. Had he remained fully sane in his twilight and had he been given a year or two more to live he might possibly have had an answer from Darwin’s ‘Origins’, though most likely not the answer he would have wished for.

How much of Dr. William Buckland’s auctioned private collection survives today? Are the more important specimens curated with their full provenance? Maybe reader feedback will provide answers in future issues of ‘Charnia’.