April 1, 1895.
My dear Mr. Bethune,—My sister and myself were indeed grieved and shocked to see from the papers you kindly sent (received yesterday morning) what a disaster had happened.[[75]] What a mercy that all the boys were saved! The order and promptness speak volumes for the spirit of obedience and discipline—and we have been reading the whole history with the greatest sympathy and admiration. Poor boys—I feel so sorry for them—running out into the cold, to watch their pet collections and treasures burning!
I gather that for building purposes you are fairly insured, but will you let my sister and myself try to replace what we can of our own books and drawings? We are writing up to Messrs. Johnston to ask how best to forward my sister’s and my five sets of Insect diagrams, which were published by our Royal Agricultural Society. When we learn, she is going to have them forwarded, and hopes you will kindly accept them as a little token of her great sympathy. By this post I am sending, in two book post parcels, my Manual (2nd edit.), “Cobham Journals,”[[76]] and Annual Reports, vols. 13, 14, 15, 16, 18. These I have here, and I am going to write to my printers to forward some more to try and make up the set. Kindly accept these, and please excuse the “Cobham Journals” not being absolutely new. But it has long been out of print and I secured a presentation copy which was offered for sale and had it bound, and put a strip of paper to hide what might be on the title-page.
Mr. Fletcher is my chief Canadian correspondent, and it is a great delight when I get a letter from him.
You will not have time at present to think of entomological matters, but we were desirous to assure you as soon as possible of our great sympathy in your trouble. With my very kind regards to yourself and Mrs. Bethune, in which my sister begs to join me.
June 7, 1897.
I was very much pleased to see your handwriting again a short time ago—and a little while before exceedingly gratified with the long kind review. You, living among so many friends and colleagues in work, can hardly appreciate how very greatly indeed I value such kind encouragement.
Your beautiful letter was a great support and comfort to me in my loss last year,[[77]] and now my health is fairly established again. I had great trouble for many weeks, some months rather, from some very troublesome disturbance of sight, but I did as well as I could, and when circumstances allowed, I got one of our best London oculists to come and see what was amiss. To my great joy he told me that each of my eyes individually was in excellent order, but there was some such difference in their action that some special glasses were needed, and I find great comfort from them. He said he wondered how I had been able to work.
Just now Alfalfa (lucerne), infested with locusts is coming in from Buenos Aires, and one of my correspondents found his horses so ill after feeding on the infested lucerne, that I sent a copy of his notes to our “Live Stock Journal.”
One of the three animals was reported to appear to suffer from colic; another recovered when bran was substituted for the locust-infested hay. The third I should conjecture was very ill when I heard. But as I know nothing of veterinary matters, I thought it was but right to send the notes on, with a kind of apology. The locusts are of the South American migratory kind—Schistocerca paranensis. Pretty creatures—even all flattened out. My correspondent sent me about 120 of them.