13 January: Boreham on Frank Buckland

An Unpredictable Scientist
It is exactly a hundred years since articles first appeared in the English magazines by a writer who was destined to become famous as the most delightful and entertaining naturalist of all time.[1]

As a small boy, Frank Buckland, the son of a renowned geologist, betrayed an extraordinary understanding of animals. If alive, he adopted them; if dead, he devoured them; and, if they were both dead and buried, he exhumed them. When his grave and reverent seniors protested against his eating such nasty fare, he asked how they knew it was nasty if they had never tried it.

When he slept with other boys in camp or dormitory, he would awaken his companions at midnight, and, their nostrils having been assailed by a savoury smell, he would regale them with grilled mice which, he assured them, were far tastier than larks. Squirrel pie, roast viper, and frogs in batter were often included in his menu.

And, even in his maturer days, he would entertain his guests with elephant soup, giraffe steak, panther chops or a tasty dish of alligator. He sometimes admitted that, the creature having reposed for too long in its grave at the zoo, the meal was not quite so toothsome as he had hoped.

Projected Human Mind Into Animal Conditions
At school, unsympathetic masters objected to his stuffing his desk with animals which, though long dead, made their presence unpleasantly perceptible. He surmounted this difficulty by ingratiating himself in the affections of the bellringer at the church, who allowed him to take his deceased friends to the top of the tower and to leave them there until the bleached skeletons could be added, without odoriferous offence, to his museum.

His home swarmed with his weird pets. His wife used to say that, instead of marrying a man, she had inadvertently married a menagerie. His neighbours dreaded the delivery of his daily mail. They never knew what might escape from the odd looking packages in the postman's bag.

The greatest day of his life was the day on which he became an angler. He took to fishing as some men take to drinking, and soon became gloriously intoxicated. He could talk of nothing but lines and hooks and casts and flies. He often declared that the greatest thrill that he ever experienced was the landing of his first salmon. The inevitable happened; he fell in love with the fish. He studied their haunts and habits so intently that he came to feel as if in some earlier incarnation, he had himself been a salmon and had retained a vivid memory of a salmon's sensations, difficulties, and requirements. Although a qualified surgeon, he was appointed Inspector of British Fisheries, and some of his reports are still regarded as classics of their kind.

Exploring A Realm Of Peril And Wonder
He will always be remembered for his invention of the water ladder, a contrivance by means of which fish could climb a weir and pass on upstream. When the pontiffs ridiculed his suggestion, his reply was unanswerable. "Build an inexpensive ladder," he pleaded, "and leave the ultimate decision to the salmon." The temporary structure was erected and the salmon voted unanimously for Buckland.

His investigations were often beset by peril. In taking from the cobra's cage at the zoo a rat that had been bitten by the reptile, the venom passed through a scratch on his finger into his own system. Before he left the gardens, he was staggering like a drunken man; he was rushed to hospital and hovered for some time at death's door. On another occasion, he maddened a viper until it bit savagely at the glass slide that he held in his hand. Examining the resultant drops under a powerful microscope, he said that their coruscations and crystallisations reminded him of the flashing of the aurora borealis.

Endowed with a most charming personality, he won the confidence and friendship of many of the most eminent men of his time. His home life was idyllic. And, by means of a fluent and natural style, he secured the admiration and even affection of millions of readers. He died at 54, confident that his most exciting discoveries were yet to be made. "God is so very good to the little fishes," he said, "that He will never allow their inspector to suffer shipwreck at the last!" His books are still being issued in the popular libraries and a monument to his memory is to be seen at South Kensington.

F W Boreham

Image: Frank Buckland

[1] This editorial appears in the Hobart Mercury on January 10, 1953.