My dear Miss Ormerod,—I must congratulate you upon your last Report. It is excellent, and reflects great credit upon you. I am very glad that your letters have been so appreciated that it has been necessary to summon a lady private secretary to your aid. It will be a satisfaction to you that you will now be able to accomplish much more than before. I am led to think whether I should not ask our next Legislature to provide for an assistant for me.
Your kind letter of the 10th inst. was also duly received. How strange, and how very interesting to me, that you should discover Cecidomyia leguminicola (Gnat midge), red maggot, with you, as you have done, working at the root—only “infesting the root,” and not, so far as known, attacking the head. If it occurs on the blossoms, you should have been able to find it there by the time that this reaches you, for, as I have somewhere mentioned, the nearly-mature larva shows a disposition to leave the clover heads very soon after they are picked. You ask if I have observed this form in other cecids of the clover. We have, so far as known, but one other clover cecid, and that is your introduced C. trifolii (Clover leaf midge). The thought suggests itself to examine some of my dried leguminicola larvæ. I am glad to have found in my collection examples preserved in alcohol of the larvæ which I had forgotten. As I put up quite a little quantity of them, I can spare you these, which I am sure will be acceptable to you.
Your investigation of the “warble” presence (p. [110]) effect upon the beef-eater will, I am sure, be of much importance. One of our Western agricultural papers has commenced an investigation. Probably your studies and publications have incited them to it.
March 12, 1894.
In going carefully over several pages of your seventeenth report, which came to me last week, I asked myself, “Is not this the best report that Miss Ormerod has written?” You are pleased to bestow praise on my reports, which from you is agreeable to receive, but I think that I can judge of their true value, and very glad indeed would I be if I could feel that they were up to the standard of yours. These are far from words of flattery, but are said because I believe that you need encouragement. Your reports have high merit and value, beyond similar writings of any of your English contemporaries—yes, far beyond.—As ever, sincerely yours,
J. A. Lintner.
CHAPTER XII
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY THE EDITOR (continued)
As a public lecturer Miss Ormerod achieved a high measure of success. The first effort in this capacity was made at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, where as “Special Lecturer on Economic Entomology,” she delivered six interesting and valuable addresses to audiences of about 120 students and professors on: (1) Injurious Insects; (2) Turnip Fly; (3) Effects of Weather on Insects; (4) Wireworm; (5) Insect Prevention; (6) Œstridæ—Warble or Bot Flies. The first was given in October, 1881, and the last in June, 1884. On the first occasion Lord Bathurst, one of the Governors of the College, was present, and Miss Ormerod was placed between Principal McClellan on the one hand and Professor Harker (biology) on the other, as her sister Georgiana humorously remarked afterwards, “for fear her courage should fail and she run away.” Her anxieties in the new capacity knew no bounds.
Although extremely nervous and anxious she succeeded in concealing this from an attentive and appreciative audience, and made an excellent appearance.[[40]] She declared that while walking from the drawing-room to the large lecture theatre at the opposite corner of the college quadrangle she could not utter a word, and on this, as on other somewhat similar exciting occasions, she experienced a drumming in her head which she failed to moderate by any attempted remedial measures. After about three years’ experience as a supernumerary member of the college staff, it was found that the preliminary preparation of the lectures was robbing her steadily increasing general work of time which was inconveniently spared, and, although it was considered an honour to be invited to give special lectures, she felt it to be a duty to her main work to retire.