“The regular course of my work brings me into such constantly recurring communication with the Entomological Departments of our own Colonies, also of many of the U.S.A. States, and various Continental Societies or specialists, that I may venture to say that as occasion occurs we interchange—I mean the heads of the Departments and myself—friendly observations, very beneficial and pleasant to me. The plan of my work has long been to reply, if I could do so soundly, to every enquiry on the day of receipt. Often investigation is needed for scientific purposes, but a large proportion of the enquiries may be answered at once so far as the practical needs of the enquirers are concerned. For further purposes my custom is to work up anything new or involved that occurs, for use in the following Annual Report. I do not devolve on my specialist referees the researches (so far as I can ascertain the state of the case), but they tell me if my identification is correct, or correct it for me, and I quite invariably, if the matter be for publication, publish also my acknowledgment. The correspondence continues steadily all the year round, more of course in the warm seasons of the year than at other times, but even in winter it never ceases. My plan has generally been to store up all the observations of the growing (and consequently insect-attacking) times of the year till autumn, and then sort them and prepare them for the Annual Report of that year. If some favourite subject be under discussion the letters may be very numerous. I once had a run of 60, 80, to 100 a day for a short time, including on one day a total of 149—but of course on such an occasion I was obliged to get help to keep reply at all in hand. The steady letter work of the year I estimate at about 1,500.”
Referring on December 27, 1889, to a proposal which had been made to procure an assistant to relieve her of the enormous pressure of work, she says:—
“I need not point out that, however agreeable the post might be to my so-called ‘assistant,’ to me the addition would be a trouble—loss of time and other inconveniences beyond telling. It would be more trouble to write to him than to attend myself, and as a referee he would be almost useless. My reference work is to the leading men of the world—those who are known, literally, as the authorities above all others on the special points; thus I am in no way derogating from the respect I bear to Professor Harker’s[[38]] knowledge, but who that knew anything would have cared for his opinion on Icerya purchasi (scale insect of orange trees)? Dr.Signoret’s opinion carried all before it. Again, no one’s opinion stands like that of Mr. G. B. Buckton on Aphides, and he communicates with me whenever I ask.
“On that most important agricultural matter, Tylenchus devastatrix, there is no one in England fit to form an opinion worth comparison with Drs. de Man and J. Ritzema Bos, by whom I am favoured, through being allowed any amount of communication. These, and men like these, pre-eminent each in his own line, are the referees that I personally am honoured by being allowed to ask aid from; and in my own humble way sometimes I can reciprocate, but ‘an assistant’ would do me no good in any of these matters. And with regard to agricultural and applied bearings I do not want a dictum, but year by year by my own correspondence with agriculturists to work out on the fields the parts of the cases as they occur, and to give the points to the public in my reports. I am responsible for the entomological work of the R.A.S.E., and unless it goes through my hands I do not know what may be going on, and no one would know to whom to write, or, in fact, anything definite about the matter, if there were an assistant. I have my own circle of helpers, my own paid special referee, by whom I reach specialists out of my circle, and my lady amanuensis in the house, besides my good sister’s invaluable aid—always promptly and ably given. So long as I can I hope to keep my work in my own hands, and if it were not for the great masses sometimes sent me, which come because I have been (up to the present time) the only Official Entomologist here, the work would not have been so distressing. Professor Harker is, I believe, excellently qualified to hold a good and high entomological post, but not even Professor Riley or Professor Westwood would work a post without referees. Some day, I hope, he may be high in office; then he will, as I do now, have his organised corresponding staff.”
“As a meteorological observer, while living at Isleworth my work consisted in taking notes on about eighteen different subjects once a day, beginning at 9 a.m., Greenwich time precisely. These included taking the readings of the maximum and minimum temperatures, and also those other thermometrical conditions, as of dry and wet bulb, solar, earth, and ground thermometers, &c.; likewise of rainfall in the past four-and-twenty hours, of the state of weather at the time; the nature of the clouds, with the amount and direction of them, and likewise the direction and estimated speed of wind. The time occupied out of doors in the observations was about twenty minutes, to which had to be added the barometrical reading with that of the attached thermometers, with corrections according to tables furnished for altitude of the barometer, and such minute errors in record of the thermometers as were shown by tables of error furnished by comparison with the instruments at the Royal Observatory, Kew. Altogether the work required some considerable amount of time, and also most scrupulous attention to accuracy, not to say some amount of personal self-denial, as whatever the weather might be at 9 a.m. the work had to be done. Perhaps there would be a thunderstorm, or at other times cold so great that my fingers almost froze to the instruments, as on one occasion, when the thermometer registered nearly down to zero.”
PLATE XX.
Miss Ormerod at her Meteorological Observation Station,
near Isleworth.