On May 14, 1900, she addressed another correspondent thus:—

“I have another formal application from the authorities of S. Australia;—(this time from our friend Mr. Molineux) relative to Horse botfly—and very especially to make them sure regarding the precise differences between Bot, Warble, and Gad flies. I have explained that Gad flies, TabanidÆ, may be distinguished by being blood suckers, and by their maggots feeding in the ground, and that ‘Bot’ or ‘Warble’ are only two convertible names for ŒstridÆ, but that ‘Bot’ is usually most specially applied to internal feeding maggots, and Warble to those that live in the hide, notably in Warbles. But such difficulty continues to arise from haphazard use of the words, I have suggested that if possible the scientific name—(Gastrophilus equi) should be insisted on. An entomologist (?) had absolutely called this attack or kind of attack inside a horse that of ‘Gad fly’! But as the attack has been well studied in the Department of Agriculture, Cape Town, I have suggested they should communicate with the Government entomologist, Mr. C. Lownsbury. For their practical needs, I have suggested clearing the Horse botfly, G. equi, eggs from the hair by dressing, and very especially that they should take care all droppings (in which the maggots pass from the horse, and where, or in the ground beneath, they go through their changes to the perfect state) should be so treated as to kill the maggots. It may possibly turn out that the Gastrophilus may be some other species than equi—I have not had specimens. When you are about to devote so much attention to Colonial Agriculture [in the “Garton” course of Colonial and Indian Lectures], I wished very much to tell you what I am about, lest I should, as this is sent me officially, go on other lines than you approve.”]

Dear Mr. Bailey,—I have now much pleasure in asking permission once again to place in your hands a cheque for £5 5s., to be used exactly as you may judge fit, in purchase of prizes for the encouragement of serviceable study of habits and means of prevention of ravages of injurious insects by your scholars. I have real pleasure in doing this because I believe the importance of those who are in any way connected with agriculture being serviceably acquainted with the causes of loss to crop or stock, and means whereby this may be lessened, cannot be over-estimated. I offer my hearty congratulations to yourself and your pupils on the satisfactory work achieved in my own department of agricultural entomology in one more year.

I do not like to offer views of my own on these matters now that what is called Technical Instruction is receiving such widespread attention throughout the country. Still I should like, for the encouragement of any of your boys who may think themselves behind in the simply scientific race, to observe that instructions given (let them be conveyed in what terms the teacher will) must be founded to start with, on facts, trustworthily observed and trustworthily recorded; and the pupil who leaves your school with the knowledge of the appearance of the common crop pests, as the wireworm, the turnip flea beetle, the warble fly maggot for instance, and, as I am well aware is the case with many of your boys, adds to this a practical knowledge of how to lessen their powers of mischief, goes forth holding in his mind what will save him many a pound in the future, and be a benefit wherever he goes. It is a foundation on which as much as he pleases may be built, but the solidly learnt field knowledge will always be serviceable.

I thank you very much for your kind letter. If I were nearer it would be a great pleasure to me to be present on your prize day, when I might have the gratification of making personal acquaintance with many of those whom I know by name as taking much interest in this important school as well as yourself, whom I should much like to meet; and also our “Aldersey boys,” whom I have known and worked with, or they with me, for so many years.

It is a very great pleasure to me that they are continuing their attention, under your skilled help and guidance, to observation of farm pests, and their work stands first as a proof of what can be done in getting rid of one insect pest.

When careful search only produces twenty warble grubs, in a district^[58] where a few years ago they were counted by hundreds, to my thinking we—that is, the boys, you and I—may fairly be proud of a thoroughly useful work. If I might venture on a kind of little moral reflection I should say that I should like the little prizes which I have so much pleasure in offering, to remind them sometimes of how much can be done, in many other things also, by even moderate attention given at the right time and under the guidance of sound knowledge. I trust they will continue their field work. With the increase of area under cultivation or occupied by stock so may their insect pests be expected to increase, and on sound knowledge of what really happens, and what at a paying rate can be brought to our aid, our hope rests of coping with the farmer’s enemies. What I can do to help them by advice, or by reply to inquiries, will be gladly at their service. Whilst I congratulate those who have won my little tokens of goodwill, and beg to offer the same for the next prize day, I must say to all that in the information and benefit they have laid up in their working and observations they have each gained a prize far better than anything I can offer them.

It is with most sincere pleasure that I hear from you once again this year of the good success of the Aldersey boys in their studies and of their steadiness in work. The methods by which serviceable instruction on this subject, namely, Agricultural Entomology, can be given is often a matter of difficulty and doubt, and I certainly think that the plan you mention to me is so good, and meets the points of combining practical knowledge with so much scientific information as is requisite, so well that I shall gladly draw the attention of those who apply to me for suggestions on these subjects to its serviceableness. You mention arranging the observations of the boys who take up the study of crop and fruit pests on a system which, though so simply worked, really forms an excellently complete course. You say that one week the boys bring samples of infestation injurious to fruit; in a second week attacks on garden vegetables; in another week on field crops; in another on timber; in another living examples of the subjects figured in the insect diagrams which my sister and I have had the pleasure of contributing to your school collections, and in yet another week you receive notes of serviceable means of prevention and remedies. This plan appears to me so sound and good that I hope I may be forgiven for intruding a few minutes on your time in greatly desiring to draw the attention of the influential visitors who will be present at your meeting to how excellently this plan meets many difficulties. A boy so taught knows his facts.

Many thanks for your letter received yesterday morning, which is very interesting indeed to me, and which I hope to reply to very soon, but now I am replying to your note accompanying the caterpillars from the Peckforton Hills, though not so fully as I could wish, for disasters befell the letter, and it arrived by special messenger from the Post Office, with the announcement that the things had got loose, and were creeping all about! Any way but little remained to judge by, so I report on what was visible. Most of the caterpillars were loopers (fig. 30), and the largest proportion of these, though differing so much in colour, appeared to me to be the Cheimatobia brumata. As you know there may be every variety of shade in these Winter moth caterpillars, from pale green down to smoky brown or almost black. Another kind of which I only find two specimens (small and very small, respectively), look as if when grown they would be the Mottled Umber moth, which is so injurious this year. There are just single specimens of a few other non-looper kinds, but at this present time all the kinds come under only one method of (feasible) treatment, and I am afraid this (even if feasible) would be much too costly on such a great scale. Washing with Paris-green or London-purple, or with kerosene emulsion, would be the right thing, or our British form of the emulsion, made by Messrs. Morris, Little and Son, Doncaster, and sold, I believe, at a very low price (consequent on the large demand for it), under the trade name of “antipest.” This only needs diluting. But when we come to dealing with great areas like the Peckforton Woods, I believe that the only really practicable way of, in some degree, lessening the evil, and counteracting its effects, is throwing water from some large engine. If a fire engine and a supply of water were available this might do a great deal of good.

I was consulted by the late Sir Harry Verney about “an ancestral oak” at Clayden, which appeared nearly cleared of leafage, and I advised playing the house fire engine on it—and the plan succeeded. The moisture falling around the tree pushed on the second leafage and (conjecturally) saved the tree. But with woods it is most difficult to manage application. I am afraid I am only able to say what would be best, if it could be done.

For the future it is a grave consideration, and consultation is very desirable, as to what means could reasonably and safely be employed to destroy the caterpillar in the ground. They will probably be very soon leaving the trees, and burying themselves just below the surface, and will most likely reappear, in moth form, and ascend the trees, beginning in the early winter, and thus eggs will be laid to start next year’s attack. I do not know whether the ground growths would permit of anything like paring being done under the trees. The best way would be “sticky banding” in October. At the Toddington fruit grounds one year 120,000 trees were sticky banded, but still this is work on an enormous scale. These are the main points to work on, and I should be very much pleased to enter on any of them more in detail, but just now I am writing as soon as I can (before going to church), as with Sunday and Bank Holiday posts I am afraid this letter will not, at the earliest, reach you until Tuesday morning, so please excuse such hastily written lines.

SAMPLE OF THE SCRAP NOTES LEFT BY MISS ORMEROD RELATING TO THE GREAT WATER BEETLE RECOGNISED BY THE PRINCE OF WALES, NOW KING EDWARD VII., AT ST. ALBANS’ SHOW.

Now I am working on my Exhibit of Economic Entomology for the Bath and West of England Society Show at St. Albans. I think you will perhaps like to look at the enclosed set of labels for the cases.^[59] There are only a few lines to be fixed outside each. In the catalogue there is a fuller account, with prevention and remedy. Is it not a triumph of condensation to get a little life history and prevention and remedy of Wireworm into about half a dozen lines? But really there is enough if people would mind it. I try to give injured material wherever I can, and there are upwards of sixty infestations. Georgiana helps me with twenty diagrams—more beautiful than any of her previous ones—and the Council, who are very kind, have awarded us all the privileges of stewards and members of Council for the Show, so that we may have every convenience of transit there.

It gave me great pleasure to be appointed External Examiner in Agricultural Entomology at Edinburgh University—for besides enjoying such a great compliment it will help my work.

N.B. Confidential. I want to tell you how kind and nice the Prince and Princess were at the Show. T.R.H. shook hands when they arrived, quite heartily, and when I had explained my own and my sister’s exhibit I thought I was to retire, but I found I was to attend round the other exhibits in the building, so I walked on by the Princess—just think, at the head of the Royal party, before the Prince and all of them! When we had gone round the Prince said, “Now, I think we must be going,” and he shook hands again, and the Princess, who was a little ahead, turned back and shook hands also. I was told by one of the officials that the Prince expressed himself afterwards as much interested, and my informant had told the Prince that I was doing work in this country which was done in other countries by the State. H.R.H. was so interested about the warbles that he called up Lord Clarendon to look at the great photo of the warbled red-deer’s hide too, and we had quite a chat together.

I had great pleasure in receiving your very kind letter, and I thought a great deal of you, and your flock, on the prize day. But now I am troubling you (the idea occurred too late to be of use at the time), to ask whether you would at all care to have (say) ten copies of my “Manual of Injurious Insects,” to give just as you may think fit as an encouragement to the boys—or perhaps a present here or there to one who might be leaving school and taking up farming. I should like it very much. You have it yourself and (I think?) one for the school library, and Mr. D. E. Byrd must have his father’s copy, but if you cared to have some copies it would really give me very great pleasure. Though fruit-insect prevention has made great advances in the last few years, this is not a special Cheshire interest, the agricultural observations are very correct still.

Mr. D. E. Byrd has kindly given me some very good information about Cheese-fly maggot attack, just precisely what I was wishing for, and also something of the principle of prevention. Mr. Ward [Organising Secretary of the Cheshire County Council] was kind enough to procure me some good information from Miss Forster [of the Cheshire Dairy School], and I hope to form a good paper by and by. All I really want now in this matter are a few of the “hopping” maggots, which most likely will turn up soon. Curiously enough, just at the time, I had an application from a bacon-curing Co. and I think we have on both sides benefited.

I now, with many thanks for the clearness with which you have been good enough to note precisely the form of the presentation labels, enclose twelve, only altering by adding to the slips for the three boys, the prefix of “Mr.” I am sure they will like it. I fancy I see them surreptitiously turning to the donatory slip, to enjoy their rise! Very many thanks to you indeed. I hope it may give the recipients pleasure, but I am very sure you give great pleasure to myself by allowing my little remembrance to these kind helpers.

I am sure you will be interested to know that the Meat Traders Associations—at the Royal Lancashire Show—are distributing thousands of my Warble leaflets, with free leave to write up to London for more.

Many thanks to you for your very kind letter. Indeed it is a trouble to me that I am not able to write oftener, but nobody knows better than yourself (who are so burdened with work for the good of others) how hard work can be, and if I quite overwork I am ill, so I am afraid to do all I wish.

Thank you for your kind congratulations. I take it as a very great honour for the University of Edinburgh to give me a Doctor of Laws Degree, &c., &c., &c. I am a little anxious about making such a very public appearance, but I dare say it will not be so alarming when it comes to the point. But I do not wish to go out of my own quiet lines, and I do not certainly wish to be called “Doctor.” Would not the right thing be for me to just put LL.D. after my name where desirable?

My Dear Mr. Bailey,—I have postponed replying to your kind letter partly because I have had a long exhausting illness, and partly because I am sure that you will regret the subject of my letter, as I do myself. Still I think I ought to tell you that I am purposing quite to discontinue my regular entomological work. You would notice what I said about the Annual Reports, but the attention to insect inquiries and (almost worse) the requests for co-operation in philanthropic literary schemes had become a burthen so very injurious to me that I was warned both by my doctor and literary colleagues that without rest the consequences might be very serious. All last year my health was failing, and (though this is temporary) an attack of influenza early in March, followed by what are called “effects,” has caused me great suffering.

But it is in reference to our long, kindly colleagueship that I am writing to you. Natural history is on a very different footing now from what it was in 1884, when with your good help our good lads started the investigations regarding Warble, which have proved to the whole world the possibility of checking this wasteful attack, and I may add they have carried the work on with their own steady, patient, long-continued energy. To this I must add my great appreciation of their useful work in real serviceable Economic Entomology, and the kindliness and heartiness of their work.

But now yourself, your school and your scholars have a world-wide name, and as you will fully appreciate that to continue, however much I may wish it, publicly attached to any one philanthropic economic work throws me open still to whole hosts of applications, I am sure you will understand my wish to withdraw. You have I think my subscription for your next great June day, and after that I, with much regret, purpose to discontinue it. I look back on many years’ kindly communication from you, but if you could have any idea of the labour which has been thrown on me from other quarters, I am sure you would think I am right. I earnestly and sincerely beg you to believe me with feelings of the highest esteem and friendship and every good wish,

P.S.—Please to excuse handwriting, as I am on my sofa.