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properly taken in hand at the same time. Finish one before you 
begin another is my rule.” 
That this is the great secret of literary success, as of most 
other successful ventures, we must all acknowledge, but how few 
there are in this hurrying, feverish, distracting age who can trace 
up their wills to the needed effort ! 
Two years after the decease of his first. wife in 1860, he married 
Sarah the eldest daughter of the Rev. Robert Hawthorn, for some 
years Curate of Swaffham Prior in Cambridgeshire next parish to 
his own. Mrs. Blomefield, who now survives him, was his 
companion in many of these home tours. During one of 
these we find him in his 72nd year ascending Snowdon on 
foot the whole way there and back—together making a distance 
of 114 miles from Llanberis—this was on 24th June, Midsummer 
day, in the year 1871. 
Of the Scientific publications of such a man it is difficult for 
me to write. A list of some sixty-three or more communications 
from his pen are given at the end of “ Chapters of My Life,” 
(reprint 1889). Of these the two most important in his own 
eyes were “ The fishes of the Voyage of the Beagle” and the 
“ Manual of British Vertebrate Animals.” 
Of the numerous contributions to the ten Scientific Societies 
which claimed him as a Member, “ nothing” (he tells us) was 
written “ otherwise than with a view to the further extension and 
advantage of those Sciences which had been his study and 
amusement through life.” 
Amongst other Societies we find him becoming a Member of 
the British Association and being present at its first Meeting in 
Oxford, 1832, when Dean Buckland was president, and Philip 
Duncan presided over the Natural History Section. 
During the long tenor of my office as Secretary of the Field 
Club many visits were paid to him in his well-known study. 
Sitting with his back to the light, a small screen sheltering him 
from the draught of the window, he was ever ready to receive 
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