August 20, 1888.
Dear Professor Wallace,—I have delayed for a short time thanking you for your very kind present of your beautiful as well as valuable book on “Indian Agriculture,”[[93]] as I wished to make a little acquaintance with it before writing. Now I see what a great amount of serviceable information you have collected, and I am greatly obliged for such an addition to my library. I note what you wisely say about not substituting our implements hastily for native kinds better fitted to the land, but just now your explicit account of “wheat cleaning,” beginning at p. 227, interests me exceedingly. I should be so glad if, when you have leisure, you would tell me a little more about this. You mention Messrs. Dell and Son, of London, as the firm that specially gave you information. I have been in communication about cleaning wheat with some of the Hull millers, one of the large corn brokers in Liverpool, and some other places, and had not heard of the washing, and this point, to me at least, seems a very important one. When I have gone carefully into the subject, and had the different kinds of screening sent in bags they do not seem to me to have been wetted. If they can wash at one mill they can at another, and we might have a chance of getting these pest-bearing extras neutralised as to evil qualities. I should greatly like to show you my set of screenings from Hull, labelled with their uses.
Do you happen to be aware of its being a regular business to supply weed seed, &c., &c., to deteriorate imports—that is of course exports of Russia, &c.? I had an interview with one of a firm who used to take orders for this at Samara! I believe these foul screenings most likely brought Hessian fly, and I rather think from a larva I saw in the spring Meromyza is come too.
It appears to me a deplorable thing that everything should be so absolutely arranged to import these nasty pests amongst us. If you will come I will show you my “pièces démonstratives.” I have not a book like yours to reciprocate your kind thought, but will you give the enclosed “Manual of Injurious Insects” a place in your collection. With kind remembrances from my sister.
November 12, 1889.
About a text-book on Injurious Insects—it is not well to recommend one’s own work, but I most earnestly wish that I knew of any better English book for plain work than my own “Manual.” I formed it because there was no other book that met the everyday needs of Agricultural Entomology, excepting my own Annual Reports, and the Reports of the Department of Agriculture, which are formed in great part from my work and revised by myself. I do not know of any work on Agricultural Entomology which I can recommend.
If you want something very good about the lower creatures up to date I suppose you could not mend “Text Book of Zoology,” by Dr. Claus, translated by Adam Sedgwick. This is a grand book, but I would not put it in my students’ hands without a strong observation that I consider Darwinianism, &c., of this nature perfectly unproved and baseless. I certainly think that presently this view will follow “spontaneous generation.”[[94]] But to go on, Curtis’ “Farm Insects” is an excellent book up to date of publication, but that is long ago now, and the second edition is an issue of the original sheets with a new preface—also £1 1s. is a great deal for students to give. If you want a book for your own study, “Die Praktische Insektenkunde,” by Dr. Taschenberg is to my thinking unrivalled for practice and science—price circa £1 4s.
Now about your Australian larvæ. The longer and larger is a lepidopterous caterpillar; as far as I see nearly allied to our Turnip caterpillar, that is to say, of much the same nature as what we call Surface caterpillar here, and Cutworms in America. This would probably turn to a good-sized moth. The larvæ in the two other bottles appear to me to be beetle grubs, of the Lamellicornes—you will notice the three pairs of well-developed legs, and the peculiar swollen form of the caudal extremity. I should suppose that like our Cockchafer (figs. 58) (or some other Chafer) maggots, that they fed at the roots of grass or other plants, but I should not like to commit myself to giving even a generic name to exotic pests in larval state. Would not a letter to Mr. Frazer Crawford, Adelaide, be the best way to gain information about prevention? And about figuring, if you sent specimens to Messrs. West, Newman & Co., 54, Hatton Garden, London, E.C., they would get them well figured—but still as the grubs and caterpillar have been so long in spirit the exact shape could not be conveyed.
I am delighted to hear that you are making progress about attention to insect pests in your University. When Professor Harker[[95]] was here lately, he told us something about these matters, and I cordially wished him the post of lecturer.
November 25, 1889.