February 17, 1897.
Dear Sir,—My work is chiefly on injurious insects, so I am afraid I am not qualified to give you the exact name of this curious collection of cement-like pupa-cases. Still I may say that your description most resembles those of the Mason bee, a kind of Osmia which constructs cells of a plaster formed of little morsels of stone, earth, &c., and then fills them with food and lays an egg on it, walls up the cell, and begins another. The grub in due course hatches and feeds, and goes through its changes to the perfect bee—and somehow or other manages to make its exit. These cells are sometimes made on walls, in parties of as many as a dozen (as shown in a figure before me), but as I said, I am not a “specialist” on Hymenoptera (Bees and Wasps), so I would not like to express a decided opinion. Your mention of the Roman coin found near the Severn cliffs is very interesting, for it was quite inexplicable to my father how it happened that, whilst coins are just the things often found in such great plenty amongst Roman remains in the pottery, bones, &c., of which there was such quantity in the site of the Summer Station of the Augustan Legion from Cærwent on the Sedbury cliffs, we absolutely did not have a single coin. Circumstances since we left have made me think that the word I have underlined may be more correct than that none were found. On one occasion it chanced I went when the ditch-diggers were at their dinners, and under a little shelter of turf (which naturally I inspected) I found a very nice little Samian cup. No more were reported as found; but after we left I heard of a box being in one of the lofts over the stables, addressed to myself, which when opened was found to contain more of these Samian cups, and also geological specimens from the cliffs. Of course I wrote down at once, but (perhaps equally of course) by that time the box had vanished. Your letter of this morning recalled all this to me, and made me think that very likely the domestic collector of curiosities who appropriated the Samian cups also made a little collection of the coins, whose total absence appeared so surprising. This is a very long story, but I thought it might be of some interest to you.
I suppose most of our old work-people are gone?
Might I venture to trouble you, in case you should be good enough some day to find time to write, kindly to let me know whether my father and mother’s grave (vault) just below the high bank with the pathway on the top in Tidenham Churchyard (plate [VII].) is in proper repair? If anything is requisite I think you would likely be so very good as to tell me, and to whom I should apply to do the work. Trusting you will forgive the intrusion on your time of such a long letter, I beg to remain, yours truly,
Eleanor A. Ormerod.
PLATE XXV.
Ruins of Chepstow Castle, Monmouthshire.
(p. [16].)
To Edward T. Connold, Esq., F.E.S., Hon. General Secretary, Hastings and St. Leonards Natural History Society.
Torrington House, St. Albans,
July 4, 1900.