MEMOIR OF THE REV. LEONARD BLOMEFIELD. 417 



circulation" amongst his friends. From this brochure we have 

 derived much of our information respecting the earlier years of 

 his life. For the last twenty-five years it has been our privilege to 

 know and to correspond with him, having made his acquaintance 

 in 1868, while on a visit to Bath. Our first meeting was in the 

 Library of the Bath Literary Institution, and we well remember 

 being struck with his personal appearance. He was a tall, spare 

 man, clean-shaved, and, even at that date, with white hair, which 

 he wore rather long. His features were pleasing, and his affable 

 manner that of a refined gentleman of the old school. One had 

 not to converse long with him before discovering that, in matters 

 zoological at all events, he was not only communicative but well- 

 informed ; and it afterwards became a subject for mutual regret 

 that the distance which separated us precluded our meeting 

 oftener. 



As he advanced in years his journeys to London naturally 

 became less frequent, until at length his great age altogether 

 precluded his leaving home. But he was still actively interested 

 in the Bath Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, which he 

 founded in Feb. 1855, and to whose 'Proceedings' he continued 

 to contribute almost to the last. In Nov. 189 J, when in his 

 ninety-second year, he read before this Society a paper entitled 

 " Remarks on the Distribution and Movements of British 

 Animals and Plants in past and present times, as instanced in 

 the Nightingale and some other cases."* 



He presented the whole of the scientific portion of his library 

 (1200 vols.) to the Bath Literary Institution, as well as his entire 

 Herbarium of British Plants in forty folio volumes. A special 

 room was designed for their reception, and the so-called " Jenyns 

 Library" is now an important feature of the building. 



He assumed the name of Blomefield in 1871, on succeeding 

 to the property of Francis Blomefield, the historian of Norfolk, 

 whose sister had married a great-uncle of his. 



He was an original member of three Societies, the Zoological 

 (1826), the Entomological (1834), and the Ray Society (1844), 

 and at the date of his death was the oldest Fellow of the Linnean 

 Society, having been elected in 1822, the same year in which he 

 became a member of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. He 



* Proc. Bath Nat. Hist, and Antiq. Field Club, vol. vii. pp. 185—199. 



ZOOLOGIST. NOV. 1893. % K 



