1890.] SPRAYING WITH PARIS-GREEN 205 



November 18, 1890. 



My sister is delighted to send you two copies of her 

 Hessian fly maggot diagram, which she hopes you will 

 kindly accept. This, as she says, is "her first public 

 appearance," so she is rather anxious ! But I have been 

 doing my best to ensure her picture a good reception, and I 

 revised it very carefully before it went out. I think you 

 will like it. It should accompany this letter, but it comes 

 so very near parcel post limitations of size that if it 

 does not arrive please expect it shortly in a different 

 travelling dress, by book post. 



December 22, 1890. 



For your collection you will, I think, like a regular letter 

 of our good old Professor Westwood, but this is not in the 

 least characteristic. He usually takes a postcard, and into 

 it, by small writing, and adding in little bits where there is 

 room, he gets in a surprising quantity of instructive matter. 

 Mr. Meade's letter you would perhaps care for, as he is one 

 of our leading Dipterists he is very kind to me in identify- 

 ing whenever I ask him ; and the letter from Mr. Hormuzd 

 Rassam is a contribution from my sister. He was, I 

 suppose, our greatest British explorer in Assyria (after 

 Sir Henry Layard) and was for a long time one of the 

 prisoners of King Theodore in Abyssinia (to liberate whom 

 this country went to war). I am not sure whether you saw 

 him when you were at Spring Grove, but he was a near 

 neighbour, and when he went on his Assyrian trips used to 

 leave his very charming wife, and untoward little flock 

 of Chaldee children, in what he was pleased to call " our 

 care." 



Many thanks to you for such gratifying notices of my 

 Manual. They are only too kind, but it is very encouraging 

 to have such approval, and very refreshing too, for sometimes 

 I am nearly eaten up by anxiety. 



I think the beneficial effect of Paris-green is quite estab- 

 lished, and I hope that the use of it may spread widely next 

 season ; I fully believe that in it or in London-purple, lies the 

 sole hope of keeping in check the crowds of miscellaneous 

 kinds of moth caterpillars which appear with the leafage. 

 In my fourteenth Report (that is, in the paper on orchard 

 caterpillars which I am now preparing for it) I have tried to 

 dwell with even tedious repetition on the points of the 

 small quantity of the Paris-green to be used, and also the 

 importance of the fluid being distributed as a mist or fine 

 spray so as to coat the leaves, but on no account to be 



