In her leaflet on the warble-fly, also known as bot-fly, she estimates the annual damage to the stock-growers of the United Kingdom from this pest at from £3,000,000 to £4,000,000. The losses due to fruit, grain and vegetable insects of various kinds, before she began her insect crusade, were much greater. In Great Britain and her colonies they amounted to very many millions of pounds sterling every year.[174]
And most of these losses, as she demonstrated, were preventable by simple precautions which she eventually succeeded in inducing the people to adopt. How much she was instrumental in saving annually to the farmers and gardeners of England by her writings and lectures can only be imagined, but the sum must have been immense.
When we recollect that Miss Ormerod accomplished all her work before it occurred to the English Board of Agriculture to appoint a government entomologist, we shall realize what a pioneer she was in the career in which she achieved such distinction and through which she conferred such inestimable benefits upon her fellows.
Miss Ormerod's entomological publications, especially her annual reports, brought her into relations with people of all classes throughout the whole world. Her correspondence, in consequence, was enormous, and not infrequently amounted to from fifty to a hundred letters a day. The great entomologists of Europe and America held her in the highest esteem, and had implicit faith in her judgment in all matters pertaining to her specialty.
One day she would receive a letter from an English gardener begging for a remedy against the strawberry beetle. The next day she would have a similar letter regarding mite-galls on black currants, or pea-weevil larvæ or clover-eel worms. Again there would be a communication from Norway requesting advice about the Hessian fly, or from Argentina asking information concerning a certain kind of destructive grass beetle, or from India appealing for help against a pernicious species of forest fly, or from South Africa seeking a relief from the boot-beetle. And still again, she was consulted by her foreign correspondents about termites, which were causing havoc among the young cocoa trees of Ceylon, or about certain peculiar species of Australian larvæ, or about the devastating action of the pine beetle in the Scotch forests, or about the wheat midge and antler moth in Finland.
One day she had a communication from the Austrian Embassy regarding a beetle that was eating the oats about Constantinople, and not long afterwards she received a letter from the Chinese Minister in London begging for information as to how to prevent the ravages of certain noxious bugs in the lee-chee orchards of China.
In view of all these facts it is not surprising that Miss Ormerod became an active and valued colleague of some of England's most noted scientific men. Professor Huxley said of her in connection with certain work performed by her as a member of one of the committees to which he belonged that "she knew more about the business" than all the rest put together.
Miss Ormerod's services and attainments, it is gratifying to note, were not without recognition in high quarters. Besides being in constant correspondence with the most eminent entomologists of the world, consulting entomologist to the Royal Agricultural Society of England and examiner in agricultural entomology in the University of Edinburgh, she was a member of many learned societies in both the Old and the New World. She was also the recipient of many medals, two of which came from Russia.
The honor, however, which gave her the most pleasure was the degree of Doctor of Laws, which was conferred on her by the University of Edinburgh. It was the first time this old and conservative institution thus honored a woman, but in honoring Miss Ormerod it honored itself as well.[175]
But when one considers the magnitude of Miss Ormerod's services to her country and to the world, when one reflects on the tens of millions of pounds sterling which she saved to the British Empire by her researches and writings, these honors seem trivial and unworthy of the great nation which she so signally benefited. If any of her countrymen had labored so long and so successfully and made so many sacrifices for the welfare of the nation as she had, he would have been knighted or ennobled. But age-long prejudices and traditions will not yet permit England to bestow the same honors on women as on men, no matter how brilliant their attainments or how distinguished their services to the crown and to humanity. Recognition of this kind may possibly come as one of the desirable innovations of the twentieth century. No lover of fair play can deny "'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished."[176]