October 11, 1897.
I am greatly obliged to you for your kind help about the flour coleoptera. I was puzzled about the granarius, as there was a slightly different look about it, from the specimens which I usually have, and I had no series for comparison. I have never had Læmophlœus in this quantity before,—they run in all directions out of the flour. I cannot find another Ptinus, but the information you have given me is quite enough, I am sure, for my flour people. The really important attack that they have got is E. kuhniella (Flour moth) but as the flour is in barrels perhaps it will not trouble them.
I have kept my X. saxeseni (Shot-borer beetles), in a good-sized glass-topped box, where the larvæ are still throwing out dust and the beetles come out and die, but I do not see any more, and I think that instead of giving you more trouble about them I had better get Mr. Knight to copy one of the U.S.A. imagos and add larvæ, pupæ, and strange “cleft” like cell from life. If the specimens you have are of interest to you pray oblige me by keeping them. I think I have material for a really interesting paper. Do you happen to know what has become of my very much valued correspondent, Dr. Karl Lindeman [the Russian Entomologist]? I have not heard from him for a year and a half, and I do not find his name in the U.S.A. Scientists’ Guide. He was truly friendly and very punctilious in writing, but if he were dead I think I should have seen his obituary. I wonder whether he was so useful to the people that he has had to take a trip to Siberia!
October 26, 1897.
What work Hylurgus piniperda (Pine beetle),[[85]] continues to make in some of the great Pine woods in Scotland, consequent on the damage by high winds some years ago. I had an application a little while ago from the forester on one of the great properties near Aberdeen, who reports great mischief on 1,000 acres. This afternoon I have a report of the woods at Craighlaw, Kirkcowan, Wigtonshire, being in most dismal condition.
I really wonder whether it will ever occur to our Board of Agriculture that there ought to be a Government Entomologist. It is only a short time since I had an application connected with the Austrian Embassy about a beetle attack that was eating the oats at Constantinople, but I suggested that Vienna was unsurpassed for its scientific men!
August 18, 1899.
I am thinking (though I have not mentioned the matter beyond just beginning at present) of (if I can find it) taking a comfortable villa and good garden at or in the outskirts of Brighton. I much wish to be nearer relations, for living so much alone is at times a very dreary kind of thing. Also there are many points in which Brighton would, I think, suit me better for my work, and possibly be more conveniently easy of access for entomological friends living on the South London lines. I know the place very well, and it has always suited my health excellently.
September 19, 1899.
I have a Hippoboscid this afternoon from Mr. Wheler, which was found on a lamb. He thinks it is a Grouse fly (or Spider fly, a near relative of the Forest fly). Surely oddly located! But so far as I see I think it must be so. Shall I not send it you? In any case it might be of interest, and I should very much like, at your convenience, to be made sure of what it is. If it be Ornithomyia avicularia (Grouse fly), I conjecture that it straggled into the nearest shelter when it developed. It is in beautiful order, but so lively that I have not been able to get a good look at the claws. [This identification was confirmed by Mr. Janson.]