“As a meteorological observer, while living at Isleworth my work consisted in taking notes on about eighteen different subjects once a day, beginning at 9 a.m., Greenwich time precisely. These included taking the readings of the maximum and minimum temperatures, and also those other thermometrical conditions, as of dry and wet bulb, solar, earth, and ground thermometers, &c.; likewise of rainfall in the past four-and-twenty hours, of the state of weather at the time; the nature of the clouds, with the amount and direction of them, and likewise the direction and estimated speed of wind. The time occupied out of doors in the observations was about twenty minutes, to which had to be added the barometrical reading with that of the attached thermometers, with corrections according to tables furnished for altitude of the barometer, and such minute errors in record of the thermometers as were shown by tables of error furnished by comparison with the instruments at the Royal Observatory, Kew. Altogether the work required some considerable amount of time, and also most scrupulous attention to accuracy, not to say some amount of personal self-denial, as whatever the weather might be at 9 a.m. the work had to be done. Perhaps there would be a thunderstorm, or at other times cold so great that my fingers almost froze to the instruments, as on one occasion, when the thermometer registered nearly down to zero.”
PLATE XX. MISS ORMEROD AT HER METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATION STATION, NEAR ISLEWORTH. ]
Professor Westwood belonged to the good old academic type of scholar who made the responses in church in Latin. He was, till his death, Miss Ormerod’s mentor from her initiation into Entomology, and she regarded him as the greatest living scientific authority in the broad lines of their common subject during the whole period of her advisory work. They “got on famously,” and as she said, he “took the privilege,” which she highly appreciated, “of knocking her work about,” as the subjoined letter, written at an early stage of her career as an authoress, charmingly shows.
UNIVERSITY MUSEUM, OXFORD, _January 10, 1884_.
MY DEAR MISS ORMEROD,—I congratulate you on the publication of your “Guide to Methods of Insect Life”—the nicest little Introduction to Entomology with which I am acquainted. You have been very fortunate in obtaining such a good series of woodcuts, many of which were new to me. Allow me to suggest one or two improvements after a hurried glance over the contents. It would have been well to have indicated more precisely the size of some of the objects figured; for instance, the locust, p. 28, is twice the size of the figure—whilst the earwig, on the same page, is about one-half the length of the figure. In p. 98, the Death’s-head moth, which is twice the size of the Eyed-hawk moth, is represented smaller than it is in next page. In p. 118 the fly is the _Sirex juvencus_, not the commoner one _S. gigas_. In p. 125 the Bee parasite has not the front portion of the wings black, but as milky as the other part. In p. 73, line 8, for “glassy” read “glossy.” I know you will thank me for these hurried suggestions, or I would not have troubled you with them.
