It had been the elder Buckland's habit to try strange dishes. While he was Dean of Westminster, hedgehogs, tortoises, potted ostrich, and occasionally rats, frogs, and snails, were served up for the delectation of favored guests, and alligator was considered a rare delicacy. "Party at the Deanery," one guest notes: "tripe for dinner; don't like crocodile for breakfast." Thus freed, to begin with, from the trammels of habit and prejudice, there was little in the way of fish, flesh, or fowl which Frank Buckland did not sooner or later try, with various results. For instance, to quote from his diary:
"March 9. Party of Huxley, Blagden, Rolfs. Had the lump-fish for dinner; very good,—something like turtle.
"March 10. Rather seedy from lump-fish."
And again:
"B—— called: had a viper for luncheon."
He held a theory that from popular ignorance and superstition much wholesome material is wasted which might be made useful not only in satisfying hunger, but in cheapening the prices of the foods which new control the market. The "Acclimatization Society" was formed by his influence, at the inaugural dinner of which everything that grows on the face of the earth and under the waters was partaken of, from kangaroo hams to sea-slugs. These various studies and experiments, all entered into with unequalled spirit and audacity, led up finally to the great work of Frank Buckland's life, which was the restocking of the watercourses of his own and other countries with the trout and salmon which had once teemed in them, but had been driven away by man's encroachments. The success of his system of fish-culture is too well known to require comment, having had the happiest results in all countries in which it has been introduced. But the perils and vicissitudes encountered in procuring the ova are little realized by most people. "Salmon-egg collecting," Frank Buckland wrote in 1878, "is one of the most difficult, and I may say dangerous, tasks that fall to my lot." And it was, indeed, the frightful exposure attending this search for spawn on a bitter January day in the icy waters of the North Tyne that shortened his bright, useful career.
The biography is most instructive and valuable, besides being highly interesting. And Frank Buckland's life was by far too rich and too many-sided to allow anything less than his full history to give an adequate idea of his patience, his fidelity of purpose, his love of work, and his joy in accomplishment. The birthday entries in his diary almost invariably disclose his satisfaction and comfort in his own life and endeavors: "December 17, 1870. My birthday. I am very thankful to God to allow me so much prosperity and happiness on my forty-fourth birthday, and that I have been enabled to work so well. I trust he may spare me for many more years to go on with my work."
The book abounds in droll stories, some quite new, and some already given in his lectures and natural-history papers. He generally travelled with some curious collections in his pockets or in bottles; and, whether these were rats, vipers, snails, or frogs, by some strange fatality they were certain to get loose and turn up among his fellow-passengers in car or diligence. To twine snakes around the necks and arms of young ladies playing quadrilles was another harmless joke. "Don't be afraid," he would say: "they won't hurt you. And do be a good girl, and don't make a fuss." He possessed an easy gift of adapting scientific theories and deductions to popular interest and comprehension, and his "Curiosities in Natural History" and other writings undoubtedly gave a strong impulse to the tastes of this generation, of which the many out-of-doors papers on birds, game, and the habits of all living creatures are the result.
"George Eliot's Poetry, and Other Studies." By Rose Elizabeth Cleveland. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
Miss Cleveland's book shows wide reading, study, painstaking discrimination, enthusiastic zeal, and, above all, the never-failing impulse of an individual idea. It reveals on every page a healthy, well-poised womanly nature, and the opinions advanced are a part of the conscience and moral being as well as of the intellect. The author has fed her mind and heart with high dreams and lofty ideals, and it is not only a pleasure to her to disclose them, but a sacred duty as well.