December 11, 1887.
I must tell you the pleasure with which I heard your letter to the Duke of Westminster read at the “Seeds and Plants Diseases” Committee of the Royal Agricultural Society on Tuesday, and recommended for report to the Council, and I am glad to see it on the Society’s report sheet sent me this morning, as being recommended for publication. I think this will do a great deal of good, and it cannot, I think, fail to be a great satisfaction to yourself that the excellent work done under your guidance and direction should thus be of such extended service throughout the land. I also figure to myself how pleased the good lads will be!
Will you accept the enclosed photo of my new and most comfortable home (plate [XIX].); it gives a good idea of it, excepting in not quite showing the very rapid slope down from the terrace flower beds.
It would be a great and very true pleasure if when you can spare time you would look in on us here for a couple of nights; I am sure that with our old Abbey and the many things of interest here, and some chat which you would let us have between whiles, the time would not lag. There are both pleasure and benefit in the work you allow me a part in. Pray believe me always, with kind regards and good wishes from us both.
Yours sincerely,
Eleanor A. Ormerod.
[On the warble question Miss Ormerod wrote on April 22, 1899, to Dr. Fletcher[[55]]:—
“Just now I am working hard on Warble affairs. The butchers (that is, leading men among them) very much wish that what is called ‘licked’ beef should be inquired into. I do not know whether you are troubled by this in Canada, but it is an alteration that takes place on the outside of the carcass of the animal beneath a badly warbled part of the hide. This part becomes soft and wet and blackish, and is popularly supposed to be soaked with moisture from the unlucky animal licking itself to soothe the irritation. Really it is the result of the chronic inflammation of the badly warbled hide. This causes much loss to butchers, and if I can get it well brought forward I think we shall through this rouse the farmers to better attention. The authorities at our Royal Veterinary College are most kindly helping me, and I hope before long to have enough sound information to be able to publish a paper on it.”
To Mr. Medd[[56]] Miss Ormerod also wrote in Nov., 1900:—
“Do you chance to have noticed that the Warble fly of the United States, the Hypoderma lineata, is considered to be quite a distinct species to our H. bovis? I believe that investigation has proved that our bovis is very rarely found in the U.S.A., just as their lineata is very rarely, indeed, found here. Practically (that is, so far as injury to the hide is concerned), the trouble is similar, both in method of operation and in the frightful amount of damage caused; but it has been laid down by good U.S.A. authorities that in the case of their Warble fly, lineata, the attack is commenced by the quite embryo maggots making their way by the mouth to the gullet and there hanging on until it pleases them to make their way onward, by piercing through the coat of the œsophagus and onward through the tissues of the beast until they arrive after their long and curious journey beneath the ribs, whence they proceed to work beneath the hide like ours. The matter seems to me very curious, but I was not called on to enter into discussion, excepting giving my reasons why I felt wholly certain, and considered the evidence in our hands proved, that our H. bovis did not start on its travels in this way.”