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| Samuel Cousins, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
We haven't had a biographical thread for a while. This one's a little different. I came across this chap recently looking for something else.
Dean William Buckland (1784-1856), naturalist and Anglican minister, was an eccentric. President of the Geological Society in England and Dean of Westminster, he was one of the early pioneers in the field of geology. Along with many lesser discoveries, he is credited with being the first person to scientifically describe a dinosaur, Megalosaurus, in 1824. In fact, he was the paragon of a perfect scientist. Until he went off the deep end, that is.
Buckland had always been a little odd to begin with. He was known to cover his desk with petrified reptile droppings and let free-range guinea pigs and jackals roam about his office. But by 1813 there were signs that the mostly innocuous scientist was moving in a very odd direction. That year, a student recounted the following episode in one of his lectures.
"He paced like a Franciscan preacher up and down behind a long showcase ... He had in his hand a huge hyena’s skull. He suddenly dashed down the steps - rushed skull in hand at the first undergraduate on the front bench and shouted ‘What rules the world?’ The youth, terrified, threw himself against the next back seat, and answered not a word. He rushed then on to me, pointing the hyena full in my face - ‘What rules the world?’ ‘Haven’t an idea’, I said. ‘The stomach, sir,’ he cried."
Buckland, it seemed, had a new fascination with the stomach and all things consumable. The most pronounced symptom of this new behaviour was that Buckland was somehow seized with an unquenchable drive to eat his way through the entire food chain. He was resolved to eat one of every type of animal. His dinner parties become infamous for their toasted mice (a favourite of his), chilled insects and stewed birds. Hedgehog, guinea pig, alligator, sea slug, ostrich - the menu at his house was eclectic to say the least. He became a sort of Anti-Noah, living near London Zoo meant he could turn up when something died he had yet to sample. Apparently on holiday when the zoo's Leopard died, he returned to find it buried, but dug it up and tried it anyway. There is no exact list of everything he tried - but we know that his two least favourite snacks were Mole and the humble Bluebottle, which he thought was 'disgusting'. He obviously had an effect on his son, Frank, as he carried on his father's passion for unusual foodstuffs, managing to plough through a whole dolphin.
In addition, Buckland’s extensive intercourse with all of nature’s delicacies apparently convinced the scientist that he had developed superhuman powers of taste. According to the former geologist and historian Simon Winchester, the Rev Buckland was with a party of friends at St Paul’s Cathedral when the group happened upon an oddly shaped stain in front of the steps. A few of them foolishly began speculating on the source of the stain, and before anyone could stop him, the Reverend was on his knees licking the dark substance. "Bat's urine!" he exclaimed.
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.’
Buckland’s most famous eccentric exploit, however, nearly defies the imagination. The story is related by the famous raconteur Augustus Hare, on the Oxford University Museum of Natural History website. "Talk of strange relics led to mention of the heart of a French King preserved at Nuneham in a silver casket. Dr Buckland, whilst looking at it, exclaimed, ‘I have eaten many strange things, but have never eaten the heart of a king before,’ and, before anyone could hinder him, he had gobbled it up, and the precious relic was lost for ever."
Despite his now supremely outlandish behavior, Buckland managed to be appointed Dean of Westminister in 1845. The old chap began failing in health however, and was bedridden for several years before copping in 1856. True to his sense of humour, Buckland arranged to leave this world in style. The plot he reserved in the local graveyard turned out, surprise, surprise, to be above only a few inches of soil above an outcrop of dense Jurassic limestone. It took several sticks of dynamite to clear enough space for the coffin. Well, that’s one way of going out with a bang.
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