The first reader in Geology and Mineralogy at the University of Oxford, Buckland was appointed Dean of Westminster in 1846. He developed the English school of historical geology with its emphasis on the progressive (but not evolutionary) nature of Earth history. Initially, he was a diluvialist and his Reliquiae Diluvianae (1823) is based on studies of fossil deposits in Kirkdale Cavern and other caves. He subsequently abandoned diluvialism in favour of Agassiz’s glacial theory which he was the first to introduce into British geology. Buckland’s Bridgewater Treatise (1836) was not only an attempt to reconcile geology and natural theology but also an up-to-date manual of historical geology. See also catastrophism.