It was indeed a pleasure to me to see your handwriting again, and very soon after I received your Report which you have so kindly sent me. I have turned over the pages to see the general contents, and first of all I am exceedingly interested in your “Silver-top” attack corresponding with our “white eared” wheat. They—these peculiar ears—appeared in Southern Russia, Dr. Lindeman tells me, two years ago, and he could not discover any insect traces any more than I could. It seems to me quite unaccountable, if it really is caused by Thrips, that they should not leave their cast clothing behind them! I wonder what you will think of my idea of ring vegetable disease? Dr. Lindeman writes me that he means to examine for Anguillulidæ (eel-worms).
I am particularly interested in your notes of C. leguminicola [American clover-seed midge], for I have long suspected we had the larvæ here, and to-day I succeeded in rearing my first imago, and have sent it off to Mr. Meade with Dr. Lintner and Professor Saunders’s description and figures to see if he will agree with me. Will you kindly thank Professor Saunders from me for having the new edition of his excellent book on fruit pests sent to me. It is a pleasure to see it in this less expensive form, so many more people will buy it.
September 2, 1889.
You must indeed have had pleasure in your visit to Washington, but what a spectacle your study table must be on your return! Does not the collection, all calling “answer me first,” quite make your heart sink? I cannot face it—it is such a terrible strain, so I stop nearly entirely at home like a limpet on a rock, and keep my work as well as I can in hand.
November 11, 1889.
Did I tell you that the Xyleborus dispar, Fab. (Shot-borer), has made what I hope may be only one of its strange intermittent appearances, in plum stems at the great Toddington fruit ground near Cheltenham? What a strangely destructive attack it is! I could not completely understand how it killed the young trees so wonderfully quickly until I dissected some stems, and found that, like your X. pyri, Peck, the creatures partly ringed the stem to begin with. And what a quantity in one stem! We need a descriptive English name, so I propose to call it the “Crowder,” from the manner in which all the galleries are so crowded with the beetles, that there seems hardly room for another specimen.
December 6, 1889.
How very very curious is what you say about Professor Riley’s now thinking E. kuhniella (Mill moth, fig. [41]) may be a South Carolina insect. I shall await the letter you promise me with great interest. I suppose some records have been searched out, for in the spring he wrote me that he thought he could safely say that this species did not occur in the United States. Dr. Lintner also held the same view, and he is care itself. I am so glad you told me, for I had written quite a neat little paragraph for my Report on the remarkable circumstance of advance of one insect attack being so minutely recorded. How awkward it would have been! How good of you to spare me a male specimen. It is quite different your sparing me a specimen to my putting anything I have in your hands; I really hope you have not robbed your own valuable collection too much. I have been trying to compare them as well as I can manage under present circumstances, but I cannot of course do much without the microscope. The colour of mine is deeper, but this is not much. It was alive, but mature, when I took it.
I do believe all good work is done in concert, though we do not know how it may be fitting together yet. It is very often a great comfort to me to think so.
