vi PREFACE 



earthquakes, as well as newspapers of early date. The intro- 

 duction of Miss Ormerod's letters to a few of her leading 

 correspondents was made necessary by the lack of other 

 suitable material. The present volume is still mainly the pro- 

 duct of Miss Ormerod's pen, but with few exceptions general 

 subjects have been eliminated ; and it forms much more 

 a record of her works and ways than it would have done 

 had she been spared to complete it. From the inception of 

 the idea the present writer was appointed editor, but had 

 Miss Ormerod lived to see the book in the hands of the 

 public his share of work would have been light indeed. 

 Armed with absolute authority from her (p. 318) to use his 

 discretion in the work, he has exercised his editorial license 

 in making minor alterations without brackets or other evi- 

 dences of the editorial pen, while at the same time the 

 integrity of the substance has been jealously guarded. 



As in Miss Ormerod's correspondence with experts only 

 scientific names for insects and other scientific objects were 

 employed, it was found expedient to introduce the common 

 names within ordinary or round brackets. Much thought 

 and care have been given to the arrangement of the letters, 

 and a sort of compromise was adopted of three different 

 methods that came up for consideration, viz., (i) accord- 

 ing to chronological order, (2) according to the subjects 

 discussed, and (3) grouping under the names of the indi- 

 viduals to whom they were addressed. While the third is 

 the predominant feature of the scheme the chronological 

 order has been maintained within the personal groups, 

 and precedence in the book was generally given to 

 the letters of the oldest date. At the same time, to com- 

 plete a subject in one group written mainly to one corre- 

 spondent, letters dealing with the subject under discussion 

 have been borrowed from their natural places under the 



heading of " Letters to Dr. " or " Letters to Mr. ." 



While Miss Ormerod's practice of referring to matters of 

 minor importance and of purely personal interest in 

 correspondence dealing mainly with definite lines of scien- 

 tific research, has not been interfered with in a few instances, 

 in most of the other groups of letters on technical subjects 

 editorial pruning was freely practised to prevent confusion 

 and to concentrate the subject matter. The chief exceptions 

 occur in the voluminous and interesting correspondence 

 with Dr. Fletcher, in her specially confidential letters to Dr. 

 Bethune, and in the very general correspondence with the 

 editor. It was felt that to remove more of the friendly 



