On taking him to see the camelopard and kangaroos in Windsor Park, she says, "He ran about with the latter and the other live animals without the least fear, though he got thrown down by them. He is a robust, sturdy child, sharp as a needle, but so volatile that I foresee some trouble in making him fix his attention." When three and a half, she says, "he certainly is not at all premature; his great excellence is in his disposition, and apparently very strong reasoning powers, and a most tenacious memory as to facts. He is always asking questions, and never forgets the answers he receives, if they are such as he can comprehend. If there is anything he cannot understand, or any word, he won't go on till it has been explained to him. He is always wanting to see everything made, or to know how it is done; there is no end to his questions, and he is never happy unless he sees the relations between cause and effect." At four he began collecting specimens of natural history. At this time a clergyman brought some fossils to Dr. Buckland. Calling his son, who was playing in the room, the Dean said, "Frankie, what are these?" "They are the vertebræ of an ichthyosaurus," lisped the child, unable to speak plainly. Mrs. Buckland gave her boy a small cabinet, which now bears this inscription: "This is the first cabinet I ever had; my mother gave it to me when about four years old, December, 1830. It is the nucleus of all my natural-history work. Please take care of the poor old thing." "In his early home at Christ Church," says Frank Buckland's brother-in-law, George C. Bompas, in his interesting life of the naturalist, "besides the stuffed creatures, which shared the hall with the rocking-horse, there were cages full of snakes, and of green frogs, in the dining-room, where the sideboard groaned under successive layers of fossils, and the candles stood on ichthyosauri's vertebræ. Guinea-pigs were often running over the table, and, occasionally, the pony, having trotted down the steps from the garden, would push open the dining-room door, and career round the table, with three laughing children on his back; and then, marching through the front door, and down the steps, would continue his course round Tom Quad. "In the stable yard and large wood-house were the fox, rabbits, guinea-pigs, and ferrets, hawks and owls, the magpie and jackdaw, besides dogs, cats, and poultry, and in the garden was the tortoise (on whose back the children would stand to try its strength), and toads immured in various pots, to test the truth of their supposed life in rock cells." The boy Frank naturally developed a taste for natural history in the midst of such surroundings. At nine years of age, he was sent to school at Cotterstock, in Northamptonshire, and at twelve was elected scholar of Winchester College.