MEMOIR OF THE REV. LEONARD BLOMEFIELD. 415 



Ely gave the living to the Curate. Considering himself then a 

 fixture, Mr. Jenyns enlarged the Vicarage house, made a garden, 

 and planted trees and shrubs. From the front windows there 

 was a pretty view of the Bottisham woods and plantations not 

 far off; while the fens out of view, but within a walk, as also 

 Newmarket Heath and the Devil's Ditch afforded rich ground for 

 Natural History pursuits. Here Mr. Jenyns resided for thirty 

 years, and only resigned his living in consequence of his wife's 

 health, which obliged him, acting under the advice of Sir Benjamin 

 Brodie, to move her to the south of England. After eight months 

 spent at Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight, he removed to Bath, where 

 he continued to reside until his death. His first wife, whom he 

 married in 1844, was a niece of Dr. Charles Daubeny, the well- 

 known Oxford Professor of Botany. His second wife, in 1862, 

 was the eldest daughter of the Rev. Robert Hawthorne, for some 

 years curate of S waff ham Prior, the adjoining parish to his own. 

 While yet quite a young man, reflecting on his father's 

 occupations and pursuits, and having made up his mind to enter 

 the church, there were four things which he determined to have 

 nothing to do with— not so much from their incompatibility with 

 church ministerial work, as from his personal distaste to some of 

 them, and the fear that they might distract his attention too 

 much from parish duties— these were sporting, farming, politics, 

 and magisterial business. Although his father and two brothers 

 were keen sportsmen, having frequent shooting parties during 

 the season at Bottisham, where the game was purposely preserved, 

 he never fired off a gun in his life, not even when desiring to 

 secure some bird for his collection or for identification. These, 

 if wanted, were shot for him by his brother or by the keeper. He 

 was always fond of studying the habits of birds in their proper 

 haunts, and Cambridgeshire being for the most part open country, 

 such species as like shelter naturally flocked to the plantations 

 round his house, where he had ample opportunities of becoming 

 acquainted with their notes, nature of their food, nidification, and 

 so forth. The smaller summer birds of passage came there in 

 numbers, and he thus became familiar with the nests and eggs of 

 all the species that remained to breed. 



He formed a collection, also, of insects of all orders which 

 he could find in Cambridgeshire, paying special attention to the 

 Diptera, which in those days were much neglected by entomolo- 



