The honour referred to, conferred by our cultured neighbours across the channel, was publicly announced in the press in the following words:—
“At the Annual Meeting on the 25th of June, 1891, of the Société Nationale d’Acclimatation de France, M. Le Myre de Vilers, president, in the chair, the large silver medal of the Society, bearing the portrait of Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, was decreed to Miss Eleanor A. Ormerod, of St. Albans, England, for her work in Economic or Applied Entomology.”
To a confidential correspondent she wrote, “You will believe that this pleases me very much.”
Plate [XXII]. shows this medal with three other silver and two gold medals that were presented to Miss Ormerod between the years 1870 and 1900 by home and foreign institutions.
Miss Ormerod preserved very few letters except those necessary for scientific or business purposes, and these she classified and fastened into books for convenience of reference. Nothing else, and especially nothing which if returned to the writer, would hereafter lead to unpleasantness, escaped ordeal of fire. After keeping letters on general subjects for a few days, she would tear them up. The result is that, of the mass of interesting contributions on many subjects, which poured in to the oracle, first of Isleworth and latterly of St. Albans, from all sorts and conditions of men and women, the few sample letters written by prominent public men and reproduced in these pages, are almost all that remain. To some of her relatives she wrote very amusing letters, but—no doubt inspired by the desire to avoid all possible danger of hurting the feelings of people referred to—she exacted the promise that they should not be preserved.
Key to Medals Presented to Miss Ormerod and Shown on Plate [xxii].
Royal Horticultural Society,
Victoria Medal of Honour,