1, Caterpillar; 2, eggs; 3-5, diamond-back moth, natural size and magnified.
FIG. 48.—DIAMOND-BACK MOTH, PLUTELLA CRUCIFERARUM, ZELL., CEROSTOMA XYLOSTELLA, CURTIS.
August 22, 1892.
After an operation on my knee the joint was right, but the long suffering had lowered my health exceedingly—and great pain pretty constantly in the troubled limb, with occasionally racking neuralgia, reduced me to such a state that I was gravely warned recovery was hopeless unless I lessened the enormous load of work. So as it was the engaged and routine work of my “office” which was so very harassing, I resigned my post at the Royal Agricultural Society as their Consulting Entomologist, and I have ever since been steadily progressing towards recovery. Sleep has returned, and the terrible pain of the neuralgia is gone, and I can work happily and comfortably.
I do not know how it happened, but the work (quite beyond what seemed my work) amplified on all hands—Continental and Colonial, and revision of papers, &c., &c.—until it would have required a good man of business and a staff to see to it all. So I cut the Gordian knot.
I hope not to make any difference at all in my Agricultural Entomological work for the country, especially as referee for the farmers and fruit-growers and the agricultural papers; also to continue my Annual Reports—and in all ways to work thoroughly. But this is very different to being obliged to attend ex-officio to people and things who or which appeared to me really often to take up time to little purpose, or even to prevent attention to really important investigation.
November 21, 1892.
One very great trouble last year was the fungoid attack to cabbage and turnip roots, which we call here “Club” or “Anbury,” or “Finger and Toe.” I do not know whether you have it in Canada. You will recognise it perhaps best under the scientific name of the “Slime fungus” which causes it—Plasmodiophora brassicæ of Woronin. Our people confuse it so constantly with maggot root attacks that they send me a deal of inquiry about it, so I do not think there can be any harm (as I have really studied it for many years) in giving a paper on it in my next Report, and I have secured three excellent photos from life, which I hope will each give a good whole-page figure of the three chief forms respectively.
There are some nice new reports of infestation (so to describe them), and I am working as steadily as I can, but I wish I could get on faster. I envy you your power of doing sound and good work so rapidly.
I have never thanked you for your excellent paper on the “Horn fly” (Hæmatobia connicola), which I read with very great interest and benefit, and lodged some of your liberal supply of copies where I thought they would be most useful—including getting attention drawn to the subject in the “Agricultural Gazette.”
Dr. Bethune most kindly asked my sister and myself to come over to stay at Port Hope for the Chicago Exhibition, but delightful as it would be to see all the friends who would be gathered to such a centre, neither sister nor self could manage the fatigue.