xllV. IN MEMORIAM REV. O. PICK ARD- CAMBRIDGE. 



These travels were something more than a passing phase in 

 his life. He never forgot his pleasure in them, and used often 

 to turn over his foreign sketch books and recount anecdotes 

 from his experiences ; and these travels gave a reality and an 

 interest to his life -long correspondence with foreign naturalists 

 and his continual work at exotic collections sent to him by 

 them and others. 



In 1866 he was married at Oxford to Miss Rose Wallace, 

 whom he had met while abroad ; and in 1868 his father died, 

 and he succeeded to the two Rectories of Bloxworth and 

 Winterbourne Tomson. The latter parish, two miles from 

 Bloxworth, consisted in its best days of about 20 souls ; and 

 my father reckoned that he had walked over 7,000 miles in 

 all weathers between Bloxworth and Tomson to do his duty 

 to his little flock, before (about 1890) the church at Tomson 

 was closed with the consent of the Bishop, and the parishioners 

 were recommended to attend one of the two churches in the 

 adjoining fields. One who knew him well thirty years ago 

 writes : " There are certain bits of landscape I can only 

 picture with your father in them. Tomson Park requires 

 him with his big stride and his coat-tails fluttering in the 

 wind. I think of him as the ideal parson of a small country 

 parish." The last sentence is in many respects no more than 

 the truth. My father did not indeed in his later years keep 

 pace with the newer movements in Church life, but he knew 

 his rustic parishioners thoroughly ; they loved and trusted 

 him, and he never spared any pains to help the young people 

 to make a success of their lives. Even when old age prevented 

 him from going far beyond his door, they came to him, as 

 ever, in every trouble and for advice one very subject ; and 

 the affection with which he was regarded in return was 

 strikingly shoAvn in the letters which some of those who joined 

 the Army in 1914 and 1915 wrote to him from France and 

 Mesopotamia. It was no wonder that one of the older farm- 

 labourers a man not much given to expressing emotion 

 should have said, when my father passed away, " There, 

 'tis the end of all things to we." Indeed, it is almost true 



