CHAPTER XX

LETTERS TO DR. J. FLETCHER (_continued_) AND TO DR. BETHUNE

Foreign correspondents—Book by Dr. Nalepa—Efforts to endow Agricultural lectures at Oxford or Cambridge—Literary productions—Sympathetic communications.

The letters addressed to Dr. Fletcher after his visit to Miss Ormerod and her sister Georgiana at St. Albans have here been grouped, as a matter of convenience, with letters to the Rev. Dr. C. J. S. Bethune, another Canadian Entomologist, who held a high place in Miss Ormerod’s esteem, both as a man of science and as a sympathetic friend in whom to confide in times of sorrow.

_To Dr. J. Fletcher, Dominion Entomologist, Ottawa, Canada._

TORRINGTON HOUSE, ST. ALBANS, _September 29-30, 1893_.

DEAR DR. FLETCHER,—We were very glad to hear you had safely returned home. I wish we could have had a longer chat, but I will be thankful for the very great pleasure of chatting with you at all.

Just after you had left (or rather, I think, were leaving) England the Rothamsted Jubilee took place, which brought very many distinguished agriculturists to this part of the country, and you may imagine how much it was wished that you could have been present. I did not attend, but a few friends from long distances off looked in here on their way.

_November 26 and December 1, 1893._

I have long been owing you a letter, and thanks, too, for your “Entomological Report,” which I read at once when it reached me. You know the pleasure and the confidence I feel in all I learn from your writings. They and your kind co-operation have been an immense help to my work and me for many a year, which I have never ceased to appreciate most gratefully. I am working now on my next Annual Report. There has been a good deal of nice fresh matter sent in, and (so far as I could) I have tried not to go over old ground. I have a grand paper on Locusts (fig. 55), my specimens being identified at Madrid by Senor Don Igo Bolivar. Wasps were a terrible plague—and I have got some charming observations, so entertaining! but I have taken great care to have them on good authority—and M. Schoyen kindly sent me some notes by the Swedish State Entomologist of an enormous appearance at Tromsoe a few years ago. As this is so high up in the Arctic circle I thought the record would be of interest scientifically, and it is so spirited I have had many a good laugh over it (p. 239).

But what I hope you may be really pleased with is, that through the kind introduction of Dr. Friedrich Thomas, of Ohrdruf, whom you will know, I think, as one of our leading European Phytopathologists, I was put in communication with Dr. A. Nalepa (of Vienna), who for some years back has quite especially devoted himself to the study of _Phytoptidæ_ (Blister galls). So that now we have in his successive publications first-rate specific descriptions, with measurements and everything requisite for certain identification of all the species which he has studied so far. Also in very many cases he gives good magnified figures, and he added to his many kindnesses to myself by sending me a plate with the details of the creatures marked with the technical names. In his treatises already published he has given excellent accounts of very many species as well as a good serviceable classification, and I rather think that the work which has been coming out in the Reports of the Imperial Scientific Society of Vienna is to be completed this spring.

This letter has been lying by me for a few days for an addition I wanted to make, and now I have to thank you very heartily for the great kindness which you have shown to poor Mr. T—— [a West of England farmer who had been unfortunate]. If he can manage to adapt himself to circumstances your timely and great assistance will have been the means of setting him up again. I doubted rather whether it was right of me to trouble you about him, still I thought I would venture, and indeed your help will have been the means of saving him from going quite down. I had no idea (no more apparently than Mr. T——) that his Canadian prospects on his own and relations’ standing were so hopeless. Do you think a little money would help? Say a couple of £5 notes or so, for possibly thick clothing is a matter needing supply. If you think it would be well, we would very gladly (if you would kindly give me his address) send out a little. One can get over scruples by calling it “a loan,” and to be returned, if ever, at convenience, or not at all if more so, but I do not like to send without your leave.

_December 5, 1893._

A hasty line to catch post, about Dr. Nalepa’s books. I have just heard from Messrs. Wesley that they have ordered (as I asked them) a duplicate set of the four of Dr. N.’s pamphlets which I have, and sent you the names of yesterday. When these arrive I shall send them on to you, hoping you will kindly accept them, if for no other reason, to be a trifling reminder to you of how much I appreciate your always kind help to myself. The money value, as I mentioned to you, is small, but I am very desirous that you should have them as soon as possible, and ordering from here will save some delay.

Mr. Sinclair [the editor] wrote me thanks for your paper, and that he is having a figure of your fly copied for the “Live Stock Journal.” This will attract attention surely.

_December 21, 1893._

I wonder if you ever came across any observation of moths—_i.e._, their larvæ—injuring silk in the raw material, as they habitually do woollen goods. I did not know that they did, but this morning I had an inquiry about it from Tiverton, and amongst the moths sent as offenders was a lovely white cocoon, which appeared as if it might have been made of the same material as the beautifully fine silk manufactured web or net sent with it, and outside this cocoon, now empty, were a number of little pellets of pale larval excrement, as if they were the results of feeding on very pale material. I hope to hear more of this. Would it not be a nice new observation?

_March 13, 1894._

Very many thanks for the copy of your charming Report kindly sent to myself, and the six so liberally also presented, which I am placing carefully where they will be appreciated and useful. One I sent to our Lancashire and Cheshire Entomological Society, to the pleasure of the President. They are doing a good deal of nice work, and were going to have a special exhibition of _Silphidæ_ (Beet carrion beetles), with observations (fig. 26). I like your Report very much; there is an immense amount of good, sound, straightforward information, both scientific and practical, in it, and it is quite an example of honest dealing with your body of observers. I have been very much interested in your Silpha notes, and I wonder whether we could get our farmers to try poisoning the cutworms, “surface caterpillars” as we call them here. I wonder whether I should not do well to follow your example and have short notes of anything interesting, even without giving a long story. These embody a great deal of useful information, but with us who are so behindhand in entomological information, I have been afraid that without a full account and a figure the readers would be all abroad. I was very much gratified to see the honourable place you give my name among your colleagues. Indeed this pleases me very much.

I was very much interested with what you told me of overplus of wasps having accompanied deficiency of rainfall in one portion of your part of the world. Our Press has been very kind to me, and I was particularly pleased with one remark, that (although retired from the Royal Agricultural Society) I had not ceased to be the “Consulting Entomologist of the Agriculturists of Great Britain.”

Just now I am running a leaflet on _Bryobia prætiosa_ (Gooseberry red spider), through the press, and this morning I had an order for 3,000 copies! Just think of that, and without the firm even seeing it!

_April 9, 1894._

I am trying to bring kerosene, or mineral oil emulsion more forward as an insecticide. I have given a number of the best recipes in one of our leading agricultural journals—“The Farmer’s Gazette,” Dublin—with the information that for those who cannot manage permanent combination of the constituents, the so-called “antipest” makes a good substitute.

It appears that “formalin,” as the trade name is called, is being brought out as a disinfectant. Mr. A. Zimmermann has been trying the effects as an insecticide on greenhouse plants, and he considered it so bad for the insects, and beneficial rather than hurtful to the plants, that he wanted my co-operation in getting it tried. Dr. Bernard Dyer told me he thought it would be well worth trial.

The point that occurred to me was could we use it against the Flour moth, _E. kuhniella_? At present we have got some flour well impregnated with emanation from some of the tablets, and Mr. Zimmermann was going to have a loaf baked of some of this flour, and consumed in his own large household, without letting them know there is anything peculiar about it! I am to know results; and I have said I should like a piece of the experimental loaf. I hope we shall not all be made very miserable indeed. If the flour rises properly, and the bread is fit to be eaten, then I am meditating getting an experiment made as to the destructive powers of the fumes by some of our folks here connected with milling, and also suggesting to Mons. J. Danysz, Director of the Laboratory of Parasitology, Bourse de Commerce, Paris, whether he might care to experiment in some of the French mills with which he had been in communication regarding destruction of _E. kuhniella_. The chemical is sold in tablets like large thick lozenges, and also as a fluid, and, I believe, in powder.

Enclosed is a little packet of seed of the pink hawkweed, which you thought pretty while here last summer, and a few seeds also of the white _Lathyrus_ (vetchling). I hope they may remind you how welcome your visits here are.

_June 20, 1894._

I was so sorry to learn from Professor Riley’s circular that he really had resigned, and also from some observations in it to surmise that all had not been quite comfortable. Who will be his successor? Will it be Mr. L. O. Howard, I wonder? I expect that Professor Riley (unless he is really very ill) will work at his Entomology from morning till night or more.

The oak trees have been very severely injured by caterpillars in various places. Down near Lymington, Hants, one of my correspondents tells me the leafage is stripped so that the trees look as if it were the middle of the winter. Aphides also are very great pests this year, and we had a bad grass attack of them near Newcastle-on-Tyne. They were reported to be spreading rapidly from one large field (that is, large for us) of 15 to 20 acres, so I thought the best advice I could give was to mow the field—in the most literal sense, cut off the source of evil.

Is it not rather an interesting point to think of—that whether the weather be hot and dry, or cold and wet, there are some kinds of insect attack which appear to do equally well? The crops bear up better in special circumstances, but their unpleasant enemies seem to me just as comfortable.

I have got a very curious investigation on hand of the mischief of some beetles on the grassland of our South American Land Co. in the Argentine Territories. I will enclose or send you a little note I put in one of our agricultural papers. Is it not curious that the two Scarabæid beetles sent over with the Dynastids should so rarely come to hand here that there is only one specimen of each in our British Museum! I hope to work up the observations, or rather, to get a good deal of trustworthy observation to work upon, and to get some more specimens.

_July 16, 1894._

I am now writing first of all to ask you kindly to accept a copy of the translation by Professor Ainsworth-Davis of Dr. Ritzema Bos’s “Agricultural Zoology.” It seems to me a very useful book, but I think it is a mistake of Messrs. Chapman & Hall to have so arranged it that the price is 6s. This is almost a prohibitory price to many who could find 2s. 6d. or 3s. Also, if I had seen proof of title I think I would have asked for my name to appear in a much more secondary fashion. I should mention this copy is one of a few sent me for friends. I did not buy it or I would not have enlarged on the price! I have written, by request of Professor Davis, a short Introduction, and I was very glad to do it to show that I had no feeling of opposition, for much of it is on parallel lines with my Manual, and there might have been misunderstandings which I should have been very sorry for—for Dr. Ritzema Bos is always kind in helping me.

You will believe how intensely I was interested in all I could hear about Professor Riley’s retirement. I was sorry for his indifferent health, but perhaps it was more the desire to be a free agent that led to his resignation. I think I could feel very much with him, but his was a magnificent post to resign.

_October 28, 1895._

I was shocked and grieved to receive the news of our friend Professor Riley’s fatal accident.[74] Dr. Bethune kindly sent me a paper with the full account, and as I did not know what any one might do in properly announcing it here, I wrote a short letter to the “Times” which they inserted at once. This was just what one might call a friendly notice; an account of the accident and a few observations, the dry obituary notice (I mean the regular formal notice) had been inserted the previous day. I was very pleased to see yours in the “Canadian Entomologist.” It was very sad, and I feel his loss much, for he was always, when we corresponded, kind and helpful.

Here, things are going on (or standing still) much as usual, but it has been a grand year for fresh observations. I have secured a long carefully watched observation of _Harpalus ruficornis_ (Ground beetle) feeding on strawberry fruit. I watched and recorded until I got so weary of acting as their fruiterer that I thought seventeen days’ observation was enough.

Amongst pine attackers I have had a lovely specimen of the _Astynomus ædilis_ (Timberman beetle), sent me from the north of Scotland, the longest horned of the European “longhorns.” It is wonderfully pretty to see the tiny beetle, not three-quarters of an inch long, comfortably bearing its delicate antennæ, nearly half a foot in expanse. Also I have got a good observation of the Pine Shoot moth’s bad doings; the _Retinia buoliana_, the “Post-horn” attack as they call it in Germany, from the twisted shoots; and some other fresh work—but the great point of this year’s observation is Horse and Cattle Diptera, Warble flies, Gad flies, and Forest flies. Just now Forest flies are being sent me from India. The Indian species is very pretty. I have been working up the structure of the Hippoboscal foot, which is indeed wonderful (plates XXIII., XXIV.). I do not understand the details, so I have had two great drawings made, and lithographed, for my next Annual Report, with the tiny foot magnified to a size of 6 inches by 5, showing every detail that appears to me observable, and I wonder what the parts will be considered to do. I think I have made out a good deal, but there is some apparatus that none of the few people I have consulted make out.

_May 15, 1897._

You will have seen the state of enthusiasm this whole country is in about the celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee. I trust that the exertion and excitement will not be quite too much for her, but it will be a great trial.

Another matter I feel more at home in—do you happen to have seen in some of our English papers that some of us are trying to get an Agricultural Lectureship established in the University of Oxford? It came about this way. It appears that the funds for support of the Sibthorpian Professorship of Rural Economy had fallen so low, that it was feared it would have to be given up. But the Clothworkers’ Company came forward with the offer of £200 a year for five years on condition of Agriculture being made one of the subjects to be taken for degrees. I offered £100 on the same terms, and then it was offered by one or two people jointly, on the same terms, to clear off a debt which seemed growing like a snowball. The matter is now under consideration by the University authorities. They would gladly accept the money, I believe, for an Agricultural Lectureship on which attendance was voluntary, but the difficulty is accepting the matter as essential for a degree.

Instruction in agriculture (that is, chemistry, forestry, entomology, &c.) would do a great deal of good at such a centre of our “coming on” great landholders as Oxford, but the students will not attend the lectures unless the matter is compulsory. Prof. Warington is the Sibthorpian lecturer—a friend and neighbour (at least, he and his wife live very near by railway)—so we can talk over progress. He has his hands, I think, very full. In case after due consideration Oxford does not think it desirable to establish the Chair, I fancy it is very likely our offer may be then transferred to Cambridge; but this is at present uncertain.

[These efforts in the higher interests of science as applied to agriculture having failed, Miss Ormerod, in her _Last Will and Testament_, bequeathed, out of her ample means, a sum of £5,000 to the University Court of the University of Edinburgh, “upon trust for the benefit of that University.”]

_December 6, 1897._

I thank you very much for your two Entomological Reports lately received. I want to read your observations on “Hair-worms” carefully as soon as I can get time, for these creatures come, I think, as regularly as the summer.

You will perhaps have seen the turmoil that the Sparrow-lovers raised, and the floods of abuse they bestowed upon me. But it advertised the leaflet beautifully, and I could hardly print at first quickly enough to keep up to the demand. Our Royal Horticultural Society has asked leave to reprint the Sparrow leaflet in their Journal, which gratifies me much.

_January 21, 1898._

I think you will be pleased to know that I am in most pleasant co-operation with the Duke of Bedford’s staff at the Woburn Experimental Fruit-ground as to endeavouring to find some way to lessen presence of _Phytoptus_ (mite galls), on black-currants. We are going to try grafting on species which are not affected, for one thing; after I have been trying for I do not know how long to get growers to consider having their bushes in line, with other crops between, I hear to-day from Woburn that it appears as if those which had been grown that way were much the freest from attack.

_February 16, 1898._

We are having an extraordinarily mild winter, and vegetation is said in some places to be one or two months over-forward. Of course insects are plying their trades heartily underground, but (so far) I do not see any difference in amount of above-ground appearances. If this is so generally, would it be too far-fetched an idea to think it was a still further confirmation of hibernation being constitutional, not an effect of weather? The underground workers that are sent me are larval “eaters” when not frozen torpid; also _Tylenchus devastatrix_ (eel-worm) is, I believe, making wild work with clover, which is popularly attributed to _Sitones_ (Pea-weevil) larvæ. I found the little eel-worm (fig. 47) in quantities in abortive shoots of “stem-sick” clover sent me, and I am giving warning about it.

_January 7, 1900._

I am very much gratified that you approve of the Index to my Annual Reports. You will believe that it was a weary work to make up our minds what arrangement would be desirable. The time and sight that I worse than wasted on it was incredible, for, I believe, I really complicated matters very much, and doctor, and business manager (Mr. T. P. Newman) spoke so seriously that I left off meddling, and I think Mr. Newstead did the work well.

I now very gladly forward a copy by book post, and I should be only too pleased to send any copies that may be desired. My hope is that besides being just a paged reference list, it may stand for a sort of up-to-date “catalogue raisonné” of British Economic Insect attacks.

_June 12, 1900._

I have owed you an answer to your kind letter so long that on receipt this evening of your very valuable pamphlet, which I am delighted to possess, I sit down at once to write.

I promise myself a great deal of information from your “Recent Additions,” which is obviously of quite exceptional value. What you say of the number of injurious insects being greater, as well as the number of species, is very interesting. I am hoping to utilise the reports of forest insects which have been sent me up to date, in co-operation with Dr. R. Stewart MacDougall, the consulting Entomologist of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland. I have much information scattered in my Annual Reports, but I have not strength to work it and attend at the same time (as I wish to do) to regular application, so we are thinking that, as a “Text-book of Forestry” is much needed for University use, we might work together; that is, Dr. MacDougall to take the heavy scientific part, as his engagements allow, and I to add what I can to the entomological notes which he has been collecting for years, and also give the figures. I should like this collaboration very much. Mr. Robert Wallace, the Professor of Agriculture in the Edinburgh University (an old friend of mine), is a very kind ally, and now I do not feel so very lonely in my work. By parcel post (posted with this letter) I am sending a photo of myself, taken in Doctor’s robes, for your kind acceptance; I hope you will approve of the appearance of your old friend in her new dress! With very kind remembrances and good wishes, pray believe me, ever sincerely yours,

ELEANOR A. ORMEROD, LL.D.

_To the Rev. Dr. C. J. S. Bethune, Editor of “The Canadian Entomologist.”_

TORRINGTON HOUSE, ST. ALBANS, ENGLAND, _April 1, 1895_.

MY DEAR MR. BETHUNE,—My sister and myself were indeed grieved and shocked to see from the papers you kindly sent (received yesterday morning) what a disaster had happened.[75] What a mercy that all the boys were saved! The order and promptness speak volumes for the spirit of obedience and discipline—and we have been reading the whole history with the greatest sympathy and admiration. Poor boys—I feel so sorry for them—running out into the cold, to watch their pet collections and treasures burning!

I gather that for building purposes you are fairly insured, but will you let my sister and myself try to replace what we can of our own books and drawings? We are writing up to Messrs. Johnston to ask how best to forward my sister’s and my five sets of Insect diagrams, which were published by our Royal Agricultural Society. When we learn, she is going to have them forwarded, and hopes you will kindly accept them as a little token of her great sympathy. By this post I am sending, in two book post parcels, my Manual (2nd edit.), “Cobham Journals,”[76] and Annual Reports, vols. 13, 14, 15, 16, 18. These I have here, and I am going to write to my printers to forward some more to try and make up the set. Kindly accept these, and please excuse the “Cobham Journals” not being absolutely new. But it has long been out of print and I secured a presentation copy which was offered for sale and had it bound, and put a strip of paper to hide what might be on the title-page.

Mr. Fletcher is my chief Canadian correspondent, and it is a great delight when I get a letter from him.

You will not have time at present to think of entomological matters, but we were desirous to assure you as soon as possible of our great sympathy in your trouble. With my very kind regards to yourself and Mrs. Bethune, in which my sister begs to join me.

_June 7, 1897._

I was very much pleased to see your handwriting again a short time ago—and a little while before exceedingly gratified with the long kind review. You, living among so many friends and colleagues in work, can hardly appreciate how very greatly indeed I value such kind encouragement.

Your beautiful letter was a great support and comfort to me in my loss last year,[77] and now my health is fairly established again. I had great trouble for many weeks, some months rather, from some very troublesome disturbance of sight, but I did as well as I could, and when circumstances allowed, I got one of our best London oculists to come and see what was amiss. To my great joy he told me that each of my eyes individually was in excellent order, but there was some such difference in their action that some special glasses were needed, and I find great comfort from them. He said he wondered how I had been able to work.

Just now Alfalfa (lucerne), infested with locusts is coming in from Buenos Aires, and one of my correspondents found his horses so ill after feeding on the infested lucerne, that I sent a copy of his notes to our “Live Stock Journal.”

One of the three animals was reported to appear to suffer from colic; another recovered when bran was substituted for the locust-infested hay. The third I should conjecture was very ill when I heard. But as I know nothing of veterinary matters, I thought it was but right to send the notes on, with a kind of apology. The locusts are of the South American migratory kind—_Schistocerca paranensis_. Pretty creatures—even all flattened out. My correspondent sent me about 120 of them.

_July 20, 1898._

I am working now on what I hope to bring out in the autumn as a good thick volume, called, “Handbook of Insects Injurious to Orchard and Bush Fruits, with means of Prevention and Remedy,” very fully illustrated. I am trying to include all the attacks of any real importance of which observations have been sent to me in the past twenty-one years, and though I give these from British observations to a great extent, I am trying to bring them all up to date. I hope you approve of the idea. Our fruit industry is increasing so much, that more information is needed for growers; but I do not feel sure I should have had courage to begin it, if some one had not written to me that he purposed bringing out a book on insect pests, and would like the use of my figures to illustrate it! It occurred to me that when he was about it he might like my letterpress also! So I have set to work and I have got to about p. 224.

There are more of the rarer attacks about than usual this year—_Atomaria linearis_ at mangolds, for instance. This morning I heard from Messrs. Laxton, of Bedford, that they have gained a complete victory over that destructive pest, the Strawberry ground beetle, or beetles, I should say (in this instance cockchafers, fig. 58). They bought a multitude of pudding basins and sunk them in the strawberry beds, baited with sugar and water, and tempting solids, and the beetles were caught in hosts, sometimes by the half basin full. I think this is real good news for strawberry growers.

I wish I knew better how to manage my work. I do not think I should have any difficulty in keeping the real work in hand, but there is so much correspondence on subjects which, indeed, one can hardly call even allied, and yet I suppose one should return a reply, and that adds uselessly to the work. How well you must know this sort of thing!

I was grieved at the loss of our kind Dr. Lintner,[78] and I saw my good friend Mr. T. P. Newman about some not wholly inadequate notice being inserted in the “Entomologist.” I could from my heart record his exceeding kindness to his weaker brethren.

_July 28, 1899._

Your very kind letter to me of a few weeks back was a sincere grief to me in its information of your abiding sorrow under the heavy affliction with which it has pleased our Father to visit you.[79] I scarcely know how to write to you, for it would be presumptuous in me to endeavour to enter to you on the only sources of consolation, which, in my own great loss, you placed so comfortably before me; but, believe me, I earnestly sympathise in your affliction, and earnestly hope that any arrangement you make may be to your comfort. I am much pleased to see in the paper of which you have kindly sent me a copy, that great care is being taken, that, so far as may be, you shall have a worthy successor in the office you have so honourably held for so many years [Head Master of Trinity College School, Port Hope].

I do not often hear from Canada, for Dr. Fletcher is so occupied and has to move about so much, that he has not time to give me the bits of entomological novelties he used to form most interesting letters with. I am trying this season to get my applicants to fill up their observations to some degree. Rather an undertaking this, you will believe! But I am getting a few new (or rather little brought forward) infestations.

The _Cidaria dotata_, sometimes called the “Spinach moth’ is, I think, of interest at present.

I am sure that when you move to a new home you will kindly let me have your address, for I should be very sorry not to be allowed to still look forward to our occasional interchange of pleasant friendly communications, and with my very kind remembrances and most sincere good wishes, pray believe me, most sincerely yours,

ELEANOR A. ORMEROD.