In 1830 Dr. Buckland was requested by the trustees under the will of the late Earl of Bridgewater to write one of the eight treatises designed in accordance with the will to “justify the ways of God to man.” “Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology” is the title of the book which is best known to the public in connection with Dr. Buckland's name. That some portions of this valuable work have grown obsolete by the progress of these sciences is a matter of course. But the main argument is as powerful as ever, and has been accepted by men who, like Professor Owen and Professor Phillips, occupy an unassailable position in the scientific world; and so little has it been superseded by any other work on the subject that Professor Boyd Dawkins uses it as a book of reference at the present day in Owens College, Manchester. The Treatise, which was six years in writing and was not published until 1836, was widely read and won a distinguished reputation for its author. Most of his work was done at night, and his habits in this respect made it difficult for him to write except at home. “I have about as much command of time here,” he writes to Murchison when on a visit the year that the Treatise was published, “as a turnpike man, and as I have not your valuable military talent of early rising I cannot steal a march upon the enemy by getting over the ground before breakfast.”