QI The Book of the Dead

Monkeys and How to Manage Them captures the mood:
    Where a fancier is not addicted to balancing the matter of petpurchase and pet-keeping upon the snap of his purse, a series of monkeys, in a properly-arranged domicile, not only affords himself considerable interest and entertainment, but gives unlimited fun to a large circle of ever - ready- to - be- amused acquaintances .
     
    One of the most complete accounts of monkey stewardship is to be found in the work of Frank Buckland (1826–80), the David Bellamy of the mid-nineteenth century. He was the son of William Buckland (1784–1856), Dean of Westminster, the man who made geology and palaeontology respectable academicdisciplines and was the first to describe a dinosaur, twenty years before the word ‘dinosaur’ itself was coined. (Buckland called his find ‘the Great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield’.)
    The Bucklands’ domestic arrangements were idiosyncratic even by Victorian standards. Part museum, part zoological garden, live and dead animals jostled for space with geological samples. Owls and jackdaws flew free, snakes and toads were scattered through the rooms in cages and the children were allowed to ride their ponies inside the house. Raised in this atmosphere, it is hardly surprising that young Frank decided his vocation was to become ‘a high priest of nature and a benefactor of mankind’. Even at the age of four, asked to identify an ancient fossil by his father, he piped up at once: ‘they are the vertebway of an icthyosawus’. At university, he impressed his peers by climbing into the fountain of Christ Church, Oxford, and by riding astride first a large turtle and then an ailing crocodile.
    Both of these were destined for the table. Zoophagy, the eating of unusual animals, was another passion Frank Buckland shared with his father. The dean set the bar high; he claimed to have eaten through the whole of creation from mouse to bison. Hedgehog, rat, puppy, potted ostrich, tortoise and pickled horse tongue were regulars on the menu at home, with roast or battered mouse a house speciality. John Ruskin was an eager dinner guest:
    I have always regretted a day of unlucky engagement on which I missed a delicate toast of mice; and remembered, with delight, being waited upon one hot summer morning by two graceful and polite little Carolina lizards, who kept off the flies .
     
    Buckland Senior confessed himself gastronomically defeated on only two occasions – by boiled mole and a ragout of bluebottles.Young Frank pushed it even further, making pies from rhinos (‘like very tough beef’), frying earwigs (‘horribly bitter’), stewing the head of a porpoise (‘like broiled lamp wick’) and consuming chops from a panther that had been buried for several days (‘not very good’). He did favourably surprise guests, though, with his accidentally roasted giraffe (the happy result of a zoo fire), raw sea slugs and kangaroo ham (at least, until he told his guests what they were eating). There was a serious purpose to his hobby. In 1859, Frank founded the Society for the Acclimatization of Animals to the United Kingdom, which set out to import exotic species as alternative, high-yielding food sources. We owe the contemporary fashion for farming ostrich, water buffalo and bison to Frank Buckland’s manic enthusiasm.
    The most bizarre comestible that ever found its way into a Buckland stomach was the heart of Louis XIV. Although the consumption of this withered and leathery object is often attributed to Frank, the only first-hand account occurs in the autobiography of the English raconteur and travel writer Augustus Hare (1834–1903). He makes it clear that William was the one guilty of royal cardiophagy:
    Talk of strange relics led to mention of the heart of a French King preserved at Nuneham in a silver casket. Dr. Buckland, whilst looking at it, exclaimed, ‘I have eaten many strange things, but have never eaten the heart of a king before,’ and, before anyone could hinder him, he had gobbled it up, and the precious relic was lost for ever .
     
    Not that this proves it actually happened, and certainly the various colourful embroideries to the tale – that it was sautéed and roasted; that it was served with a side helping of Frenchbeans; that Buckland considered its flavour would have been improved with a gravy made from marmoset’s blood; that he ate it for Christmas dinner – really don’t stand up to scrutiny. But the incident may explain