You will have seen the state of enthusiasm this whole country is in about the celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee. I trust that the exertion and excitement will not be quite too much for her, but it will be a great trial.
Another matter I feel more at home in—do you happen to have seen in some of our English papers that some of us are trying to get an Agricultural Lectureship established in the University of Oxford? It came about this way. It appears that the funds for support of the Sibthorpian Professorship of Rural Economy had fallen so low, that it was feared it would have to be given up. But the Clothworkers’ Company came forward with the offer of £200 a year for five years on condition of Agriculture being made one of the subjects to be taken for degrees. I offered £100 on the same terms, and then it was offered by one or two people jointly, on the same terms, to clear off a debt which seemed growing like a snowball. The matter is now under consideration by the University authorities. They would gladly accept the money, I believe, for an Agricultural Lectureship on which attendance was voluntary, but the difficulty is accepting the matter as essential for a degree.
Instruction in agriculture (that is, chemistry, forestry, entomology, &c.) would do a great deal of good at such a centre of our “coming on” great landholders as Oxford, but the students will not attend the lectures unless the matter is compulsory. Prof. Warington is the Sibthorpian lecturer—a friend and neighbour (at least, he and his wife live very near by railway)—so we can talk over progress. He has his hands, I think, very full. In case after due consideration Oxford does not think it desirable to establish the Chair, I fancy it is very likely our offer may be then transferred to Cambridge; but this is at present uncertain.
[These efforts in the higher interests of science as applied to agriculture having failed, Miss Ormerod, in her Last Will and Testament, bequeathed, out of her ample means, a sum of £5,000 to the University Court of the University of Edinburgh, “upon trust for the benefit of that University.”]
December 6, 1897.
I thank you very much for your two Entomological Reports lately received. I want to read your observations on “Hair-worms” carefully as soon as I can get time, for these creatures come, I think, as regularly as the summer.
You will perhaps have seen the turmoil that the Sparrow-lovers raised, and the floods of abuse they bestowed upon me. But it advertised the leaflet beautifully, and I could hardly print at first quickly enough to keep up to the demand. Our Royal Horticultural Society has asked leave to reprint the Sparrow leaflet in their Journal, which gratifies me much.
January 21, 1898.
I think you will be pleased to know that I am in most pleasant co-operation with the Duke of Bedford’s staff at the Woburn Experimental Fruit-ground as to endeavouring to find some way to lessen presence of Phytoptus (mite galls), on black-currants. We are going to try grafting on species which are not affected, for one thing; after I have been trying for I do not know how long to get growers to consider having their bushes in line, with other crops between, I hear to-day from Woburn that it appears as if those which had been grown that way were much the freest from attack.
February 16, 1898.