The Dietary Delicacies of the Oxford Omnivores

n           When Gideon Mantell discoverednthe teeth of Iguanodon in 1822, most palaeontologists and anatomistsndisagreed with his identification (including, initially Cuvier) and one,nWilliam Buckland, thought that they were either from a wolf-fish or maybe anmammal that had drowned in Noah’s flood. 

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nHe urged Mantell to be cautious innpublishing his findings, advice which Mantell followed, but Buckland went on tonpublish a description of another dinosaur himself, becoming the first person tondescribe a dinosaur, the Megalosaurus, in print, (a fragment of anfossilised femur found in a quarry in Cornwall in 1676, had been described bynRobert Plot in 1677, in his The Natural History of Oxfordshire, and wasnthought to come from a human giant – in 1763, Robert Brookes examined the bonenand named it Scrotum Humanum – can you guess why?). 

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nThe Very Reverend DrnWilliam Buckland was odd, to say the very least. He caused quite a stir withnhis explicit lectures on the mating habits of reptiles – The Times feltnhe should restrain his enthusiasm ‘in the presence of ladies’ andnCharles Darwin dismissed him as a ‘buffoon’ – and he always wore hisnacademic gown when out digging for fossils. The hallway of his Oxford home wasnlined with the skulls of animals; monkeys, a bear (in a mortarboard) and anhyena, amongst other animals, had the run of the house (the hyena ate thenfamily’s guinea pig). His wife, Mary, nwas a talented illustrator and shared her husband’s enthusiasm fornnature – one night, the pair got up from their bed and she prepared a flour andnwater paste whilst he went off to fetch the family tortoise, in an experimentnto prove that the gait of the Cheirotherium was testudinal (… it was). 

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nBut strangest of all was Buckland’s diet. He was a committed zoophagist – anneater of animals. All animals. In Buckland’s opinion, the Creator had placednthe creatures of the world at Man’s service, to feed and clothe him and to benhis companions, and it was Man’s duty to eat the rich bounty of foods providednby the Almighty for his sustenance. And eat them he did – from elephant trunknsoup, panther chops, horse tongue, porpoise head, crispy mice in batter,nkangaroo ham and eland steaks to accidentally grilled giraffe (… there had beenna fire at London Zoo). He found the taste of mole to be the worst, until hentasted bluebottles. 

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nOnce, while touring a church, the local vicar showed himn‘martyr’s blood’ dripping from the rafters – Buckland dropped to his knees andnbegan to lap at the miraculous liquid, which was, he announced between laps,nbats’ urine. On a visit to Nuneham House, he was shown a silver casket holdingnwhat was reputed to be the heart of King Louis XIV of France. Before anyonencould stop him, Buckland announced, “‘I have eaten many strange things, butnhave never eaten the heart of a king before,” before snatching it up andnswallowing it. 

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nHis son, Francis (known as Frank), continued and even extendednhis father’s culinary experiments – he was rumoured to regularly visitnsympathetic staff at Winchester Hospital, with whom he exchanged trout and eelsnfor pieces of human anatomy. He founded the Acclimatization Society, which wasndedicated to finding new food sources, and he became famous for the variednmenus he offered at his home in Albany St, London. 

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nFrank Buckland went on tonbecome an eminent naturalist in his own right and became H.M. Inspector of SalmonnFisheries in 1867, introducing many important innovations in fish farming. 

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nWilliam Buckland, despite Darwin’s misgivings, made some importantnarchaeological finds, including the discovery of the oldest human skeleton innBritain and first human fossil ever excavated, the so-called Red Lady ofnPaviland. 

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nIn 1823, he descended into the Goat’s Hole Cave on the GowernPeninsula, Wales, where he unearthed the bones of an Upper-Palaeolithic man whonlived about 33,000 years ago. The bones were stained with red ochre depositsnfrom the clay in the cave, and the colour and accompanying beads, ivory rodsnand seashells lead Buckland to initially identify the body as that of a femalenprostitute from the Roman period of occupation (Buckland believed that nonhumans could be older than Noah’s flood), although later examination has shownnthat the skeleton is that of a young male, aged about twenty-one years of age.nIt was the oldest ceremonial burial in Europe, the age confirmed by a series ofnradiocarbon datings. Subsequent excavations in the cave have discovered overn4,000 flint tools and fragments, bones, teeth, bone needles and bracelets. 

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nHe wasn’t above the odd practicalnjoke – and not least from beyond the grave. After his death in 1856, it wasnfound that the plot that he had identified as his desired final resting placenin Islip graveyard, when the superficial soil had been removed, was solidnJurassic limestone. The rock had to be blasted with gunpowder in order to makenthe grave – a geologist of Buckland’s calibre would surely have known what laynbeneath the soil. 

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nA student of Buckland’s wrote:

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