Dr. Fream’s lectures [Steven course in Edinburgh University] have been quite a success. This delights me. Professor Wallace has been exceedingly pleased with the sound manner in which he built up his Agricultural Entomology in the students’ minds, and I think the course has given great satisfaction. He is a very sound worker, and I should greatly like him to be my collaborateur at the Royal Agricultural Society of England. I have not brought the subject forward yet, but if there were an Assistant Entomologist who might present my Reports instead of my personal attendance being necessary in all the business hurry of that great number of gentlemen, it would relieve me of a very distasteful part of my work.
March 23, 1891.
We have just got a full stream of applications for gratuitous distribution of “Paris-green” pamphlets, so we are very anxious to keep all in hand. I greatly hope that this will take hold. We broke through many objections last year, and now we can point to saved crops, and no disastrous massacre of gardeners—not even a sparrow defunct; also a lessened amount of Winter moth in autumn, and a glorious promise of flower bud on trees which have been reported on. Last year we did not know where to turn for a proper sprayer; now, on the day before yesterday there was to be a “contest of sprayers” at the Crystal Palace. I think this shows of itself how the matter on insecticide sprayings has come forward. I am fairly broadcasting the P.G. pamphlets. Many years ago when a railway bridge on a new method of construction was made over the Wye (plate [XXVI]), near my old home, the natives were “afraid for their lives” to go over it, but the ingenious plan was struck, of running any one gratuitously over and back all day long—the trains of trucks were crammed, the people shouted for joy, and the victory was won; and now I am carrying out the same principle. Gentle and simple, wise and very unwise, are wanting “Paris-green” pamphlets, and I hope that by the sheets of advice, &c., that have to be sent accompanying, that the very silliest souls will not do harm; and meanwhile we are getting the subject popularised. You will think that I am tête montée about it, but it has been a long, severe labour, and I thoroughly believe that on the adoption of the arsenical insecticides depends the success of the English orchard growing in the future.
So far as I see, the “grubs” have not been the least the worse for the cold of the recent frost so long as they were in their self-made shelters below ground, but we carried devastation amongst hundreds of Cockchafer grubs, Melolontha vulgaris, by ploughing. The larvæ were too torpid to bury themselves, and the birds disposed of them very thoroughly.
Dr. Lindeman writes that he “had a district inspection set on foot” to find presence of Tylenchus devastatrix in Russia, but “always with negative results.” This is very interesting.
PLATE XXVI.
Railway Bridge on the Wye, near Chepstow.
1, Adults; 2, anterior of female, showing mouthspear; 3, embryo in egg—all greatly magnified, anterior portion 440 times (from figures by Dr. J. Ritzema Bos). One of the causes of clover-sickness. “Tulip-rooted” oat plant.
FIG. 47.—STEM EEL-WORMS, TYLENCHUS DEVASTATRIX.
June 26, 1891.