1, Larva; 2 and 3, females; 4 and 5, eggs in different stages of development—all enormously magnified (2 from sketch by E. A. O.; the other figures after Prof. Geo. Atkinson).
FIG. 49.—TOMATO ROOT-KNOT EEL-WORM, HETERODERA (ANGUILLULA) RADICICOLA, MÜLLER.
Female, showing side and upper surface; larval scales, with legs still visible—all magnified; infested gooseberry twig.
FIG. 50.—CURRANT AND GOOSEBERRY SCALE, LECANIUM RIBIS, FITCH.
You will see by a copy of the Report I have just issued that we have really got the Heterodera radicicola (Root-knot eel-worm). I should have liked to give the name of the sufferer, but he is our greatest English tomato grower, and it might have injured his business. He is trying many experiments, and at the end of April he is going to give me a report. It would be a pleasure indeed if we managed to make out any serviceable remedy.
At present I am trying to make a fair history and description of the Gooseberry scale, Lecanium ribis, Fitch, which has made such a headquarters here (I suppose set up when I was too ill to look after it) that I think I must almost have a chance of finding the desiderated male! But except the few lines by Dr. Signoret we do not seem to have a European description. Locusts came over in imported vegetables and fodder about a month ago, so that I secured three species, but no more are arriving now. Mine and the grower’s chief investigation at present is as to finding measures to check the attack of the Mustard beetle, Phædon betulæ, and evil-doers of similar habits, and I am making a kind of link in operations with Messrs. Colman and Messrs. Keen, our two great rival mustard firms, and I greatly hope we shall make some advance.
One great worry is these (to my thinking) unqualified so-called lecturers sent out by the County Councils.
Beetle, natural size and magnified; maggot, magnified, and natural size on leaf.
FIG. 51.—MUSTARD BEETLE, PHÆDON BETULÆ, LINN.
I only knew as a fact a very little while ago that Professor Riley was standing for the post of “Hope Professor of Zoology” at Oxford, vacant by the death of our grand old friend Professor Westwood. Mr. Hachett-Jackson (Professor Westwood’s assistant, I believe) wrote to me very urgently from Keble College, and I responded most heartily, mentioning everything I could think of that might assist Professor Riley’s election. It would have been a benefit to myself past hoping for to have a really great Entomologist like Professor Riley in a definite post over here. The magician’s rod would have beaten all kinds of underhand misrepresentations, scientific and practical, out of the field. Anyway I fear that Professor Riley has hardly a chance, and indeed I wonder that he should contemplate changing his grand central position—central to the whole world—for such a very inferior post without genial colleagues around him.
By book post accompanying I send a copy of Mons. J. Danysz’s paper on Ephestia (Flour moth), to your kind acceptance, in case you have not yet seen it; you will be interested to run it over and see his views of Pyrethrum. I very much doubt whether we could get our millers to try it, but it would be different with you.