Appendix A (p. 37).

Salmon Fishery.—Both locally, and thence to the country at large, the bay beneath the Beachley and the Sedbury Cliffs was very important, as being one centre of the Severn Salmon Fisheries. The following notes by Mr. Frank Buckland,^[117] Government Inspector of Salmon Fishing for England and Wales, are interesting: “The visitor will observe in the lower estuary stretching for a considerable distance into the water from the muddy banks, rude piers made entirely of wicker work, which look like large eel-baskets; these are called ‘ranks’ of ‘putchers.’ Each putcher is about 5 ft. 6 in. long, and 21 inches across the mouth. A framework is made by driving stakes into the mud, and the putchers are then fastened together in rows one above the other, often to the height of 10 feet or more; these great walls of baskets look not unlike, as my friend the late John Keast Lord remarked, ‘a gigantic wine rack filled with bottles, encased in wicker work.’ As the salmon come along with the tide in the thick muddy Severn water, they run their noses into the open mouths of the putchers, and speedily get jammed up at the narrow end; the poor things cannot turn, and the more they struggle to get out, the firmer they become wedged in; as the tide recedes they are left high and dry. I have often observed that wasps wait about till the tide goes down, and then take first cut at the salmon. A great many first-class Severn salmon are caught in these putchers and sent to the London market.”

With regard to another form of baskets used for catching flat fish, &c., at p. 368, he says:—

“Besides the putchers another kind of basket is used which is called putts; ... the wicker work is much closer in this instance than in the other. The putt in its most special form consists of three parts, the large part or mouth, called the ‘putt’; the middle called the ‘butt’; and the small end or bag, called the ‘firwell.’... The diameter of the opening is about 5 feet, and the length from 12 to 13 feet; they are used to catch flat fish, &c.” The illustration (fig. A, page 36), given by Mr. Buckland shows the putt, with the small end or “firwell” removed.

The above technical description of the arrangement, measurement, &c., of the “putts” and “putchers,” corresponds in most points with the details of the long rows (three or four in number) running out into the river beneath the Sedbury cliffs (plate X.).

Appendix B (p. 67).

The following notice appeared in the “Times” of March 11, 1901:—

“Widespread regret will be felt, both at home and abroad, at the announcement which we are able to make, that Miss Eleanor A. Ormerod, after many years of unremitting toil, has decided to discontinue the Annual Reports on injurious insects and common farm pests, which she has prepared for a period now extending to close upon a quarter of a century. When in the year 1877 she issued the first of these annual records, and thus placed at the disposal of the public the fruits of her intimate acquaintance with many departments of natural history, very little systematic work had been done in the direction of saving crops and live stock from the ravages of insect and other pests. In this respect the position of the farmer and the stock-keeper to-day, as compared with what it was in the middle of the seventies, is vastly improved. It is true that the farmer may still lose his turnip and swede crops through the ravages of the active little beetle, which is perversely termed the ‘fly’; that fruit-growers may bewail the loss of their apples and plums owing to the abundant presence of the winter moth; and that stock-keepers may view with dismay the damage both direct and consequential that their cattle incur through the activity of the warble fly. But these and similar losses are entirely preventable, provided that there be no careless indifference, and that time and trouble be devoted to the object it is sought to attain. It is to Miss Ormerod’s persevering efforts that this change is due; it is to her persistent enquiry year after year into the causes of mischief and into the means of removing them that the subject of agricultural entomology, which so long had languished in this country, gradually forced its way to the front, until it has become recognised that some serviceable knowledge of it is indispensable to the mental equipment, and cannot be omitted from the technical training of the aspiring agriculturist. Readily and gratuitously she has answered day after day all inquirers, whilst for twenty-four consecutive years her pen and pencil have been devoted to the preparation of the annual reports, every one of which she has generously published at a nominal price, which year after year involved a substantial loss. ‘But the work was hard,’ she now tells us—and the simplicity of her words renders them eloquent—‘for many years for about five or six months all the time I could give to the subject was devoted to arranging the contributions of the season for the Annual Report of the year.’ In spite of indifferent health, at times accompanied by much physical suffering, Miss Ormerod has carried on her self-imposed task, and the result is that she has revolutionised the subject of agricultural entomology, as it was understood in this country twenty-five years ago. Not only at home, not only throughout the British Empire, but in all progressive countries Miss Ormerod’s name takes first rank amongst the Economic Entomologists of the day, and correspondence reaches her from beneath almost every flag that flies. And, now that the time has come when this talented lady feels it expedient to no longer work at the high pressure which has so long been maintained, all who have benefited by her disinterested labour—and they are very many—will join in the hope that she may long live to enjoy the comparative leisure to which she is looking forward.”

Contents of Insect Cases Shown at the Bath and West of England Show at St. Albans (May, 1896), now the Property of the University of Edinburgh, kept along with Miss Georgiana Ormerod’s Diagrams in the Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh.

Case I.—Weevil Attacks to Peas, Beans, and Clover-Seed, and Leafage. 1. Infestations of Pea seed. 2. Infestations of Bean-seed. 3. Clover-seed “Pear-shaped” Weevils. 4. Leaf-eating Weevils, and gnawed Leaves.

Case II.—Attacks to Corn Stems. 1. “Gout Fly” attack to young Barley, also to ear and stalk. 2. Hessian Fly attack, showing Wheat-stems elbowed at point of feeding of Maggot.

Case III.—Infestations of Stored Corn and Meal. 1. Granary Weevils in Wheat. 2. Granary Moth in Wheat. 3. Meal and Flour Beetle in Meal. 4. Mite in Granary Rubbish.

Case IV.—Stored Corn. Common Granary Weevil in Barley.

Case V.—Infestation of Wheat Mills and Stores. Mediterranean Mill Moth, and Flour felted together by its Caterpillars. (A very bad Mill Pest).

Case VI.—Waste Material Cleaned out of Imported Corn. 1 and 2. “Rubble.” 3. “Hencorn.” 4. Broken Bits, used for bedding Pigs. 5 and 6. Uses not given; supposed to be used for Adulteration.

Case VII.—Infestations in Imported or Stored Fodder; also Sparrow’s Food. 1. Locusts in Lucerne from Buenos Aires. 2. Hay-stack Moth from Clover or Sainfoin Stacks. Food from Sparrow’s Crop containing Corn.

Case VIII.—Field Crop and Grass-Root Infestations. 1. “Click Beetles” and their Grubs, known as “Wireworms.” 2. Turnip “Flea” Beetles and Mustard Beetles. 3. Chafers and their Grubs.

Case IX.—Field Crops, Root, and Leaf Infestations. 1. Cabbage and Turnip Moths, and their “Surface” Root-feeding Caterpillars, also Cabbage, and Pea-leaf Caterpillars. 2. “Mangold-leaf Fly” Maggot attack. 3. Death’s-head Moth Potato-leaf Infestation.

Case X.—Apple Infestations. 1. American Blight. 2. Codlin Moth. 3. Winter Moths, and their “Looper” Caterpillars, also Cabbage and Pea-leaf Caterpillars. 4. Goat Moth, of which the Caterpillars feed in Wood. 5. Lappet Moth, and its leaf-eating Caterpillars.

Case XI.—Pine Infestations. 1. Pine-sheets distorted by Tortrix Moth Caterpillar attack. 2. “Timberman” Beetle, with longest horns of any European kind. 3. Pine beetle infestation in bark and shoots.

Case XII.—Elm and Ash-Bark Infestations. 1. Attacks of “Common” Elm-bark Beetle, and of “Lesser” Elm-bark Beetle. 2. Attacks of “Ash-bark” Beetle.

Case XIII.—Insect Injuries to Wood and Leather. 1. Sirex Tunnellings in live Silver Fir. 2. “Death-watch” Beetle’s Borings in Oak and Beech Timber. 3. Injuries of Maggots of another kind of Death-watch Beetle to manufactured leather.

Case XIV.—Infestations Partly Bred in Ponds and Ditches. 1. Water Beetles injurious, in Beetle or Grub state, but chiefly in both, to young Fish in Ponds. 2. Liver-fluke of Sheep, and “Pond Snails,” in which it lives in its early condition.

Case XV.—Fly Attacks, Injurious to Cattle, Horses and Sheep. 1. Forest Fly; also Sheep Spider Fly (popularly known as “Sheep Tick.”) 2. Bot Flies, Common Horse Bot Fly, and Sheep-nostril Bot Fly. 3. Gad or Breeze Flies.

Case XVI.—Ox and Deer Warble. 1. Ox Warble Fly and Deer Warble Fly, in different stages, with Maggots in spirit. 2. Piece of young Red-deer’s Skin, showing swellings caused by Warble Maggots in the under side.

Case XVII.—Injuries to Cattle Hide, from Ox Warble. 1. Pieces of Hide, showing swellings with Maggots within, from the under-side; also perforations in the outside, leading down to the Maggot-cell; also sections of Hide, showing Channel down through the Hide, and Maggot-cell cut through. 2. Pieces of Tanned Warbled Leather.

Appendix D (p. 182).

Professor Riley, in “Insect Life” (the U.S.A. Official Entomological Journal), says:—“Miss E. A. Ormerod wrote us on September 23, 1889, as follows: ‘... The beetle which is considered one of the rarest of the British Coleoptera, Xyleborus dispar, Fab. (formerly known as “Bostrichus” or “Apate,” Fig. 46) has appeared in such great numbers in plum-wood in the fruit grounds at Toddington, near Cheltenham, as to be doing very serious injury. I found, on anatomising the injured small branches, that one of the galleries which the horde of beetles (packed as closely as they can be) forms or enlarges, passes about two-thirds round in the wood, more or less deeply beneath the bark, whilst another of the tunnels, likewise occupied with its closely packed procession of beetles, was in possession of about two inches of pith, so that the rapid destruction of the tree was fully accounted for. The attack appears, as far as I can see, to disappear usually very rapidly, but I am advising owners to make sure. This disappearance, I conjecture, may arise from the excessive rarity of the small male of this species. Amongst about sixty ?(female specimens) which I extracted from the tunnels I only found one ? (male).’”

Professor Charles Valentine Riley was killed by a fall from his bicycle in the streets of Washington. He was riding, as usual, to his office in the morning, accompanied by his young son. It was down-hill, and he was evidently going rather fast, when his wheel struck a stone carelessly left in the roadway after repairs. He was thrown violently, and died from the effects of the fall a few hours afterwards.^[118]

‘Biologist, artist, editor, and public official, the story of his struggles and successes, tinged as it is with romance, is one full of interest. Beginning life in America as a poor lad on an Illinois farm, he rose by his own exertions to distinction. His nature was a many-sided one, and his success in life was due to sheer will-power, unusual executive force, critical judgment, untiring industry, skill with pencil and pen, and a laudable ambition, united with an intense love of nature and of science for its own sake. This rare combination of varied qualities, of which he made the most, rendered him during the thirty years of his active life widely known as a public official, as a scientific investigator, while of economic entomologists he was facile princeps.

‘He was born at Chelsea, London, September 18, 1843. His boyhood was spent at Walton-on-Thames, where he made the acquaintance of the late W. C. Hewitson, author of many works on butterflies, which undoubtedly developed his love for insects. At the age of eleven he went to school for three years at Dieppe, afterwards studying at Bonn-on-the-Rhine. At both schools he carried off the first prizes for drawing, making finished sketches of butterflies, thus showing his early bent for natural history. It is said that a restless disposition led him to abandon the old country, and at the age of seventeen he had emigrated to Illinois, and settled on a farm about fifty miles from Chicago. When about twenty-one he removed to Chicago, where he became a reporter and editor of the entomological department of the “Prairie Farmer.”

‘Near the close of the war, in 1864, he enlisted as a private in the 134th Illinois regiment, serving for six months, when he returned to his editorial office.

‘He also enjoyed for several years the close friendship of B. D. Walsh, one of our most thorough and philosophic entomologists, with whom he edited the “American Entomologist.” His industry and versatility, as well as his zeal as an entomologist, made him widely known and popular, and gave him such prestige that it resulted in his appointment in 1868 as State Entomologist of Missouri. From that time until 1877, when he left St. Louis to live in Washington, he issued a series of nine annual reports on injurious insects, which showed remarkable powers of observation both of structure and habits, great skill in drawing, and especially ingenious and thoroughly practical devices and means of destroying the pests. It goes without saying that this prestige existed to the end of his life, his practical applications of remedies and inventions of apparatus giving him a world-wide reputation. In token of his suggestion of reviving the vines injured by the Phylloxera by the importation of the American stock, he received a gold medal from the French Government, and he afterwards received the Cross of the LÉgion d’Honneur in connection with the exhibit of the U. S. Department of Agriculture at the Paris Exposition of 1880.

‘The widespread ravages of the Rocky Mountain locust from 1873 to 1877 had occasioned such immense loss in several States and Territories that national aid was invoked to avert the evil. The late Dr. F. V. Hayden, then in charge of the U. S. Geographical and Geological Survey of the Territories, sent Dr. P. R. Uhler to Colorado in the summer of 1875. Mr. Walsh had made important suggestions as to the birthplace and migrations of the insect. Meanwhile Riley had since 1874 made very detailed studies on the migration and breeding habits and means of destruction of this locust. Dr. Cyrus Thomas had also been attached to Hayden’s Survey, and published a monograph on the locust family, AcrididÆ. As the result of this combined work Congress created the United States Entomological Commission, attaching to it Dr. Hayden’s Survey, and the Secretary of the Interior appointed Charles V. Riley, A. S. Packard, and Cyrus Thomas members of the Commission. Dr. Riley was appointed chief, and it was mainly owing to his executive ability, business sagacity, experience in official life, together with his scientific knowledge and practical inventive turn of mind in devising remedies, or selecting those invented by others, that the work of the Commission was so popular and successful during the five years of its existence. In 1878, while the Report of the Commission was being printed, Riley accepted the position of Entomologist to the U. S. Department of Agriculture, but owing to the lack of harmony in the Department, he resigned, Professor J. H. Comstock being appointed. Congress meanwhile transferred the cotton-worm investigation [on which Riley had been engaged] to the Entomological Commission. Dr. Riley was reappointed to the position of U. S. Entomologist in June, 1881. Mr. L. O. Howard said of the administration of this office: “The present efficient organisation of the Division of Entomology was his own original conception, and he is responsible for its plan down to the smallest detail. It is unquestionably the foremost organisation of its kind at present in existence.” Again he writes: “Professor Riley’s work in the organisation of the Division of Entomology has unquestionably advanced the entire Department of which it is a part, for it is generally conceded that this Division has led in most matters where efficiency, discipline, and system were needed.”

‘His Division published the first bulletin, and in “Insect Life” began the system of periodical bulletins, which has since been adopted for the other Divisions of the Agricultural Department. In an address, says Howard, before the National Agricultural Congress, delivered in 1879, in which he outlined the ideal Department of Agriculture, Professor Riley foreshadowed many important reforms which have since become accomplished facts, and suggested the important legislation, since brought about, of the establishment of State Experiment Stations under the general government.

‘His practical, inventive genius was exhibited in his various means of exterminating locusts, in the use of kerosene oil emulsified with milk or soap, and in his invention and perfection of the “cyclone” or “eddy-chamber” or Riley systems of nozzles, which, in one form or another, are now in general use in the spraying of insecticide or fungicide liquids.

‘Although the idea of introducing foreign insect parasites or carnivorous enemies of our imported pests had been suggested by others, Riley, with the resources of his division at hand, accomplished more than any one else in making it a success. He it was who succeeded in introducing the Australian lady-bird to fight the fluted scale.

‘Riley’s scientific writings will always stand, and show as honest work. He was not “a species man” or systematist as such; on the contrary, his most important work was on the transformations and habits of insects, such as those of the lepidoptera, locusts and their parasites, his Missouri reports being packed with facts new to science. His studies on the systematic relations of Platypsyllus as determined by the larva evince his patience, accuracy, and keenness in observation and his philosophic breadth.

‘His best anatomical and morphological work is displayed in his study on the mode of pupation of butterflies, the research being a difficult one, and especially related to the origin of the cremaster, and of the vestigial structures, sexual and others, of the end of the pupa. Whatever he did in entomology was original. He was also much interested in AËronautics, and took much delight in attending sÉances of spiritualists and exposing their frauds, in one case, at least, where another biologist of world-wide fame, then visiting in Washington, was completely deluded.

‘Riley was from the first a pronounced evolutionist. His philosophic breadth and his thoughtful nature and grasp of the higher truths of biology are well brought out in his address on “The Causes of Variation in Organic Forms,” as Vice-President, before the biological section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1888. He was a moderate Darwinian, and leaned, like other American naturalists, rather to Neo-Lamarckism. He says: “I have always had a feeling, and it grows on me with increasing experience, that the weak features of Darwinism and, hence, of natural selection, are his insistence (1) on the necessity of slight modification; (2) on the length of time required for the accumulation of modifications, and (3) on the absolute utility of the modified structure.” Riley, from his extended experience as a biologist, was led to ascribe much influence to the agency of external conditions, remarking, in his address: “Indeed, no one can well study organic life, especially in its lower manifestations, without being impressed with the great power of the environment.” He thus contrasts Darwinism and Lamarckism: “Darwinism assumes essential ignorance of the causes of variation and is based on the inherent tendency thereto in the offspring. Lamarckism, on the contrary, recognizes in use and disuse, desire and the physical environment, immediate causes of variation affecting the individual and transmitted to the offspring, in which it may be intensified again both by inheritance and further individual modification.”’

‘“Evolution shows that man is governed by the same laws as other animals.” “Evolution reveals a past which disarms doubt and leaves the future open with promise—unceasing purpose—progress from lower to higher. It promises higher and higher intellectual and ethical attainment, both for the individual and the race. It shows the power of God in what is universal, not in the specific; in the laws of nature, not in departure from them.”’