Francis Trevelyan Buckland
| Frank Buckland | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
17 December 1826 Oxford, England |
| Died | 19 December 1880 (aged 54) |
| Nationality | English |
| Occupation | naturalist, surgeon, popular writer |
Francis Trevelyan Buckland (17 December 1826 – 19 December 1880), better known as Frank Buckland, was an English surgeon, zoologist, popular author and natural historian. He was born in a reputed family of naturalists. After a brief career in medicine he took an interest in fishes and other matters. He was one of the key members and founders of the acclimatisation society in Britain, an organization that supported the introduction of new plants and animals as food sources which was influenced by his interest in eating and tasting a range of exotic animal meats.
Frank was the first son of Canon William Buckland, a noted geologist and palaeontologist, and Mary, a fossil collector, palaeontologist and illustrator. Frank was born and brought up in Oxford, where his father was a Canon and the Dean of Christ Church. His godfather was the sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey. Educated at home by his mother, he went, at eight and a half, to a boarding school in , Northamptonshire staying with his uncle John Buckland. From 1837–39, he went to a preparatory school in Laleham, Surrey, run by his uncle, John Buckland, a brutal headmaster who flogged his pupils quite excessively. Relief came with a scholarship to Winchester College, a school with an unbroken history of six hundred years. Here he was taught by the Second Master, Charles Wordsworth, who sent letters of praise to his father. Winchester had a harsh regime, but was much preferable to his previous school. While at Winchester he continued to take an interest in animals, trapping rats and mice, dissecting and sometimes eating them. Students complained of a foul smell emanating from the remains of a cat under his bed. Towards the end of his schooling he was dissecting human parts that he obtained from the hospital on the sly. He was known for his exploits with a lancet. One student with a dolichocephalous head heard Frank muttering "what wouldn't I give for that fellow's skull!" He was not a first-rate scholar, but managed to gain entrance to Christ Church, Oxford in October 1844, after failing to get a scholarship to the smaller Corpus Christi. He joined a debating club and the first essay he read was on "whether Rooks are beneficial to the farmer or not". He became a friend of the curator at Surrey Zoo and when he heard that a panther had died, he had it dug up and declared that the meat "was not very good". When the British Association met in 1847 at Oxford, Frank took along his pet bear Tigleth Pileser dressed in student attire of a cap and gown to the party. Charles Lyell wrote that Buckland introduced the bear formally to him and other zoologists present. This was not to go on for long as the Dean finally informed him that "either you or your bear must go". In 1845 Frank went to Giessen for three months to study chemistry under Justus von Liebig. In September 1846 he made a trip around Switzerland. Frank also attended some of the lectures of his father.
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