Name: 威廉-巴克蘭：試圖吃掉地球上所有動物的人| BBC 創意 (William Buckland: The man who tried to eat every animal on Earth| BBC Ideas)
Uploaded: 2025-07-17T08:56:35.000Z
Duration: 4 min 5 s

It's the 1830s, and you're invited to dinner at the home of one of Britain's most celebrated scientists.

現在是 19 世紀 30 年代，你受邀前往英國最著名的科學家之一的家中共進晚餐。

關係子句

You take the only chair that isn't piled high with books, rocks and fossils.

你坐在唯一一張沒有堆滿書籍、岩石和化石的椅子上。

Rorker's children are eager to show you their pets.

Rorker 的孩子們渴望向您展示他們的寵物。

Your host is William Buckland, and he's a zoophage, someone with a passion for eating one of every animal on Earth.

我們的主持人是威廉-巴克蘭，他是個動物食人族，熱衷於吃掉地球上的每一種動物。

Buckland was born in 1784 and became the first person ever to take geology, the study of the origin, history and structure of the Earth at the University of Oxford.

巴克蘭出生於 1784 年，是牛津大學有史以來第一位選修地質學（研究地球的起源、歷史和結構）的人。

He was then ordained as a priest before becoming a reader in mineralogy, giving popular, if unorthodox, lectures.

隨後，他被任命為牧師，之後成為礦物學的讀者，並舉辦了廣受歡迎的講座，儘管這些講座並不正統。

A student recalled him sweeping down the front row one morning, holding a hyena skull.

一位學生回憶說，一天早上，他拿著一個鬣狗頭骨從前排走下來。

He picked out an undergraduate and demanded, What rules the world?

他挑出一個大學生問道："是什麼統治了世界？

巴克蘭就是按照這條規則生活的。

Dinner at the Buckland house could consist of hedgehog, crocodile, panther, sea slug, porpoise, mole and even earwig.

巴克蘭家的晚餐可能包括刺蝟、鱷魚、黑豹、海蛞蝓、鼠海豚、鼴鼠甚至蠼螋。

And life was no less extraordinary between meals.

兩餐之間的生活也同樣不平凡。

William and his wife Mary taught their children natural history in a house packed to the rafters with specimens, animal, vegetable and mineral, living and dead.

威廉和他的妻子瑪麗在一間堆滿動物、植物和礦物標本的房子裡教孩子們自然史，這些標本有活的，也有死的。

When they weren't riding ponies through the dining room or playing with snakes and frogs, the children took part in their parents' scientific studies.

在不騎小馬穿過餐廳或玩蛇和青蛙的時候，孩子們就會參與父母的科學研究。

One particularly wacky experiment involved spreading pie pastry over the kitchen table and allowing a pet tortoise to walk across it.

其中一個特別古怪的實驗是在廚房的桌子上鋪上餡餅，讓一隻寵物烏龜在上面走來走去。

The family then compared the tracks to fossilised tortoise prints found in ancient sandstone.

一家人隨後將這些足跡與在古砂岩中發現的龜紋化石進行了比較。

Besides eating, fossils were the Bucklands' passion.

除了吃，化石也是巴克蘭夫婦的愛好。

As a religious man, William believed that the Great Flood mentioned in Genesis was not just a story, but historical fact, and he spent a long time trying to reconcile the Bible's accounts with geological evidence.

作為一個虔誠的教徒，威廉相信《創世紀》中提到的大洪水不僅僅是一個故事，而是歷史事實，他花了很長時間試圖將《聖經》中的描述與地質證據相協調。

However, after examining the remains of exotic creatures, including hyenas, found in a cave in North Yorkshire, he started to question the Bible's timeline.

然而，在研究了北約克郡一個洞穴中發現的包括鬣狗在內的外來生物遺骸後，他開始質疑《聖經》的時間線。

These animals had not, as some argued passionately, been washed there from their tropical homes by Noah's Flood.

這些動物並不像有些人熱烈爭辯的那樣，是被諾亞洪水從熱帶家園衝到這裡的。

And the passage of geological time had since turned the British Isles from a tropical to a temperate landscape.

隨著地質年代的推移，不列顛群島從熱帶變成了溫帶地區。

William proved this by identifying large amounts of hyena dung on the cave floor.

威廉在洞穴地面上發現了大量鬣狗糞便，證明了這一點。

And time helped explain another mystery of the era, dinosaurs.

時間有助於解釋這個時代的另一個謎團--恐龍。

In 1824, Buckland announced arguably his greatest breakthrough of all, the fossilised bones of a giant reptile he named Megalosaurus, found in a slate quarry in Oxfordshire.

1824 年，巴克蘭宣佈了他最偉大的突破--在牛津郡的一個石板採石場發現了巨型爬行動物的骨骼化石，他將其命名為巨龍。

It was the first scientific account of a dinosaur.

這是第一部關於恐龍的科學著作。

He showed them to French anatomist Georges Cuvier, who noticed the bones' similarity with living lizards.

他把這些骨頭給法國解剖學家喬治-居維葉（Georges Cuvier）看，後者注意到這些骨頭與活著的蜥蜴很相似。

Buckland, Cuvier and others' work was vital in helping Victorian Britain understand dinosaurs and their place in evolution.

巴克蘭、庫維耶等人的工作對幫助維多利亞時代的英國人瞭解恐龍及其在進化中的地位至關重要。

William's wife Mary was a keen geologist and a collector in her own right.

威廉的妻子瑪麗是一位敏銳的地質學家，本身也是一位收藏家。

She illustrated those game-changing hyena bones for the Royal Society and produced beautiful teaching aids for William's lectures.

她為英國皇家學會繪製了那些改變遊戲規則的鬣狗骨骼插圖，併為威廉的講座製作了精美的教具。

Like many wives of scientists in the 19th century, she may have done much more than that, perhaps contributing to some of William's major works.

與 19 世紀許多科學家的妻子一樣，她所做的可能遠不止這些，也許她還為威廉的一些重要著作做出了貢獻。

As for William's quest to eat the world's animals, well, he failed to complete the challenge, despite his best efforts.

至於威廉想吃掉全世界的動物，儘管他已經盡了最大努力，但還是沒能完成挑戰。

After a period of illness unrelated to his diet, he died in 1856.

經過一段時間與飲食無關的疾病後，他於 1856 年去世。

Eccentric as they were, the Bucklands remind us that science can happen anywhere, including at home, and that great science can also be great fun, as long as you're not a mouse.

巴克蘭夫婦雖然古怪，但他們提醒我們，科學可以在任何地方發生，包括在家裡，偉大的科學也可以非常有趣，只要你不是一隻老鼠。