Buckland

I’m reading a mid-nineteenth century book titled Curiosities of History by Francis Buckland, alighted on in some second-hand bookshop. It must have been popular. This a condensed version of the eight volumes, published after the author’s death. Here you can find out how best to secret jewels about the person to avoid highway robbers (bury under the flesh of the left arm and let the skin heal over, apparently: ‘I fear, however, that if his precious depot were suspected, any robbers into whose hands he might fall would fairly mince him to pieces in search of further treasures.’ Or how about the efficacious properties of dugong oil, as good as Cod Liver oil but without the nauseous taste or smell: ‘Messrs. J Bell & Co., 338 Oxford Street, have a large stock of it on hand at the present time.’ Then there’s the moss called Usnea that ‘is found on the heads of men that have been hung in gibbets, or the like. The English druggists  generally bring these heads from Ireland…This moss was used in the composition of the “sympathetick ointment” available in the cure of “falling sickness”. Giants, mummies, penny microscopes made from a drop of heated tree gum and a matchbox, Natator the Human Frog, Natator eats a bun under water, the performing Bull, performing fleas, the monster pig, Blondin’s imitation of an ape, fossil butter, fossil pork, and much much more!
I’ve long been a fan of the Bucklands, who as a family dedicated themselves (among other things) to eating their way through the animal kingdom. Father William was Dean of Christchurch Oxford, where he kept crocodiles in the round pond in the quad. Notable visitors have recorded being served such things as mice on toast for breakfast. Francis tells how, on hearing that a nearby zoo had burned to the ground, father and son rushed to the scene in the hopes of tasting rare flesh. Unfortunately they were some days after the event and the cheetah steaks were already rather high. William said the worst thing he’d ever tasted was a mole, though I think he changed his mind when he ate a bluebottle. In Italy they were shown the miraculous patch of stone eternally wet from the blood of some saint. Before he could be stopped William was on his hands and knees licking the ground. Bat’s urine, was his laconic response. He was also a noted geologist. Once when his driver got lost, he stopped the coach, picked up a handful of earth, sniffed it, and declared, ‘Ah, Uxbridge!’

Even the appendices of this book are fascinating. Though why I say that I don’t know. Appendices are often the best parts of a book. Ancient deposits of buried butter occasionally turn up in Irish bogs. (Well they did then, I don’t know if they still do.) Bog butter is very old butter that has turned to adiopocere. Under the right -damp – conditions animal flesh can turn to adiopocere too. Adiopocere is a kind of fossilised fat. Buckland speculates that bog butter may in fact be the  product over time of some bog-stranded cow. In the appendix, however, he notes that in fact bogs have the opposite effect on flesh. The acidic conditions tend to preserve it. Bog butter turns out to be indeed just butter. The ancient Irish had a pension for rancid butter. They used to bury it, but sometimes must have forgotten where.