Enclosed is a little packet of seed of the pink hawkweed, which you thought pretty while here last summer, and a few seeds also of the white Lathyrus (vetchling). I hope they may remind you how welcome your visits here are.
From life; Red spider (outline figure after Koch)—both magnified. Infested leaf, natural size.
FIG. 52.—GOOSEBERRY AND IVY RED SPIDER, BRYOBIA PRÆTIOSA, C. L. KOCH.
June 20, 1894.
I was so sorry to learn from Professor Riley’s circular that he really had resigned, and also from some observations in it to surmise that all had not been quite comfortable. Who will be his successor? Will it be Mr. L. O. Howard, I wonder? I expect that Professor Riley (unless he is really very ill) will work at his Entomology from morning till night or more.
The oak trees have been very severely injured by caterpillars in various places. Down near Lymington, Hants, one of my correspondents tells me the leafage is stripped so that the trees look as if it were the middle of the winter. Aphides also are very great pests this year, and we had a bad grass attack of them near Newcastle-on-Tyne. They were reported to be spreading rapidly from one large field (that is, large for us) of 15 to 20 acres, so I thought the best advice I could give was to mow the field—in the most literal sense, cut off the source of evil.
Is it not rather an interesting point to think of—that whether the weather be hot and dry, or cold and wet, there are some kinds of insect attack which appear to do equally well? The crops bear up better in special circumstances, but their unpleasant enemies seem to me just as comfortable.
I have got a very curious investigation on hand of the mischief of some beetles on the grassland of our South American Land Co. in the Argentine Territories. I will enclose or send you a little note I put in one of our agricultural papers. Is it not curious that the two Scarabæid beetles sent over with the Dynastids should so rarely come to hand here that there is only one specimen of each in our British Museum! I hope to work up the observations, or rather, to get a good deal of trustworthy observation to work upon, and to get some more specimens.
July 16, 1894.
I am now writing first of all to ask you kindly to accept a copy of the translation by Professor Ainsworth-Davis of Dr. Ritzema Bos’s “Agricultural Zoology.” It seems to me a very useful book, but I think it is a mistake of Messrs. Chapman & Hall to have so arranged it that the price is 6s. This is almost a prohibitory price to many who could find 2s. 6d. or 3s. Also, if I had seen proof of title I think I would have asked for my name to appear in a much more secondary fashion. I should mention this copy is one of a few sent me for friends. I did not buy it or I would not have enlarged on the price! I have written, by request of Professor Davis, a short Introduction, and I was very glad to do it to show that I had no feeling of opposition, for much of it is on parallel lines with my Manual, and there might have been misunderstandings which I should have been very sorry for—for Dr. Ritzema Bos is always kind in helping me.