Railways.The first important line in France, from Paris to Rouen, was constructed through the instrumentality of Sir Edward Blount (1809-1905), an English banker in Paris, who was afterwards for thirty years chairman of the Ouest railway.
Four years afterwards he made his first appearance as an author with an elegy called Fame's Memorial, or the Earl of Devonshire deceased, and dedicated to the widow of the earl (Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, "coronized," to use Ford's expression, by King James in 1603 for his services in Ireland) - a lady who would have been no unfitting heroine for one of his own tragedies of lawless passion, the famous Penelope, formerly Lady Rich.
The earliest known use of the word Ornithology seems to be in the third edition of Blount's Glossographia (1670), where it is noted as being " the title of a late Book."
In 1601 he took orders, in 1603 becoming chaplain to Charles Blount, earl of Devonshire.
A memoir of his life by the Rev. Arundell Blount Whatton, prefixed to a translation of the Venus in sole visa, appeared at London in 1859.
