Memoir of the Rev. Leonard Blomejield. 357 



study of the pages of the great book which is ever open before 

 us. " True wisdom," as one says, " teaches that, besides the 

 things which are revealed, there yet remain secrets which 

 belong not to us or to our children ; still the knowledge 

 attained and attainable by them is great, and they love not 

 less because they know not more." This, as we believe, was 

 the spirit which animated Mr Blomefield, and it is the spirit 

 which inspires all true students of nature. 



In his "Chapters of My Life," printed privately in 1889, 

 Mr Blomefield wrote that he considered his work, in all ways, 

 was at that time entirely finished. But he has done and 

 written much since then ; he was over ninety years of age 

 when he read papers before the Field Club and the Selborne 

 Society — that before the latter being printed at length in our 

 columns. To the last the library he presented in trust to the 

 Royal Literary and Scientific Institution was an object of his 

 solicitude ; on his last ride into the city (26th July) he was 

 busy with the librarian (Mr Mitchell) in arranging and 

 re-arranging the volumes, and counting and parcelling the 

 numbers ; and the room in which is deposited his life-work, 

 his herbarium, with his much-loved library, is just as he left 

 it, to return to it no more. Locally, of course, he will be 

 best remembered by his connection with the Bath Field Club, 

 of which he was one of the founders (the last survivor of them, 

 too), and for the establishment, in Bath, of a meteorological 

 station, the small observatory in the Institution Gardens being 

 set up through his instrumentality. From that time (1865) to 

 the present, daily observations of the weather have been taken, 

 and published week by week in the Chronicle. His own 

 observations on the Climate of Bath were condensed in a 

 valuable paper, which appears in the Proceedings of the Field 

 Club. 



It is only a coincidence, of course, but not less worthy 

 of mention, that his death synchronises with the centenary of 

 that of the far-famed naturalist, Gilbert White of Selborne, 

 whose work, which is now a classic, he first met with when at 

 Eton, in 1813, a copy being lent to him by Lord Brecknock, 

 afterwards the second Marquis of Camden, whose father and 

 grandfather held the Recordership of Bath, and which city, in 

 later years, he also represented in Parliament. Not satisfied 

 with reading the book once or twice, he copied out nearly the 



