Dear Madam,—I really do not know how to thank you for the honour you have done our University Library by making it the custodian in perpetuitatem of the delightful collection of sketches and water colours, the arrival of which has made the 15th of May a red-letter day for the Librarian at least. You will, I hope, be pleased to know that the priceless volumes have been placed in a room already rendered a sanctum by relics of such notable names as Shakespeare and Burns, Hus and Knox, Queen Mary of Scotland, King James VI., Queen Elizabeth, &c., not to mention Halliwell-Phillipps and David Laing, both of whom, I doubt not, Dr. George Ormerod would have recognised as his colleagues and peers. Professor Wallace has duly received his volumes. The drawings have been shown to Sir William Muir, who, I believe, is to thank you personally and who will lay them on the table at the next meeting of the University Court.
H. A. Webster.
Sir William Muir wrote:—
University of Edinburgh,
June 29, 1900.
Dear Miss Ormerod,—Your six volumes of drawings were yesterday shown to the University Court (as they already had been to the Senatus), and were well received and valued by them. And I was asked to communicate their obligations to you for them. They will be placed in the Library, and will be remembered as the gift of our First Lady Graduate, LL.D.
W. Muir.
May 24, 1900.
Dear Professor Wallace,—Will you kindly accept the enclosed photograph. It does not seem to be quite me, but “me” does not quite know myself yet in cap and gown. At least it may remind you sometimes of most hearty gratitude for all your kind care which enabled me to come to personally receive the great honour symbolised.
Dr. MacDougall was good enough to send me some splendid specimens of bark infested by Hylesinus crenatus (Greater ash-bark beetle), which have enabled me to figure this attack. I should like very much indeed to form a “Handbook of Insects Injurious to Forest Trees,” and I have a mass of material in my Annual Reports bringing the subject, I think, up to date, and a beautiful supply of figures, but there is such a run of application and correspondence that I do not see my way to doing it myself—and yet it seems a pity for the information to be lying comparatively idle.