Man and His Handiwork

The late Dr. Buckland, to whom Geology is so much indebted, succeeded in showing that the charge of atheism was absurd, and that the folly was on the part of those who refused to believe facts that had been proved beyond any possibility of contradiction.

He did not, however, escape an occasional sly shaft on the part of his contemporaries who were skilful with pen and pencil, and many were the witty epigrams and caricatures that took Dr. Buckland as their theme.

One of these productions was a parody on his lectures on the extinct animals, and represented a Saurian as lecturing on a human skull to an audience of fellow Saurians. In describing the skull, the lecturer draws attention to the character of the teeth and the feebleness of jaw, and expresses his inability to understand how the animal could have obtained food.