348 Memoir of the Rev. Leonard Blomefield. 



was remarkable for the quietness and tenacity of purpose with 

 which he deliberately pursued and at length attained the com- 

 plete recovery of health 



As recently as July 1892, I received from him two new 

 pamphlets, and with the second a letter which (apart from its 

 contents) neither by its handwriting nor its diction would strike 

 anyone as the letter of a very aged man. I quote one sentence : 

 " I think I told you, when you called here, that I had two proofs 

 to show you, that my mind still retained its accustomed activity 

 — one you have had; the other I now send you." Of these 

 pamphlets the first was "Remarks on the Distribution and 

 Movements of British Animals and Plants, in Past and Present 

 Times," read before the members of the Bath Natural History 

 and Antiquarian Field Club, 11th November 1891. The other 

 was a pamphlet of 32 pages, printed for private circulation, on 

 "The Life of the World to Come." It is an expansion of the 

 speculative suggestion (which has been entertained by eminent 

 thinkers) that the countless worlds open to our view on a starry 

 night have some destined relation to the future progress and 

 development of the human race in the next stage of existence. 



I have known him since 1857, in which year I came to Swans- 

 wick, and found him living there and serving as curate to Mr 

 Scarth for the neighbouring parish of Woolley. He was one of 

 the two clergymen who inducted me into the benefice, the other 

 being the Rev. George Buckle, th'^n vicar of Twerton, now Pre- 

 centor of Wells Cathedral. At that time he was the Rev. Leonard 

 Jenyns — a name already well known to the scientific world in 

 connection with every branch of natural history, and still more 

 by his work on meteorology. 



Nor must it be thought that his great interest in science caused 

 him to neglect or discharge in a perfunctory manner the duties 

 of his sacred office. Both at Woolley and at his former vicarage 

 of Swaffhara Bulbeck, he had to do with a small population, and 

 there was no incompatibilitj' between his clerical duties and his 

 scientific pursuits. He is one of those who have left upon my 

 mind the distinct impression of a faithful and true pastor. 



He had two adits to philosophic thought — the first his in- 

 herited faith, and the second his acquired science. To reconcile 

 faith and science has been the greatest problem of theological 

 thought in the past generation ; and it was this which for the 

 last quarter of a century formed the chief intellectual pursuit of 



