220 



NATURE 



[July 7, 1904 



archaeological notes. Miss E. A. Ormerod was the 

 youngest of a family of ten children, and was born on 

 May II, 1828, and she died after a long illness on July 

 19, 1901, after a busy and useful life, as happy, we may 

 well believe, as that of Miss North or Miss Cobbe. 



Natural history runs in families, and besides the two 

 sisters, Eleanor and Georgiana, one of the brothers. 

 Dr. E. L. Ormerod, has also left a worthy entomo- 

 logical record behind him in his valuable work on 

 "British Social Wasps." 



Among Miss Ormerod's accomplishments was a 

 knowledge of Russian. It would have been interesting 

 if we had been told how she came to study a language 

 still so little known in England. 



Miss Ormerod does not appear to have specially in- 

 terested herself in entomology until 1852, and it was 

 not until 1877 that she commenced the great series of 

 reports of observations on injurious insects, the twenty- 

 fourth and last of which was only issued in 1900, the 

 year before her death, so that she may be said to have 

 died in harness, though towards the end she found her- 

 self compelled by failing health gradually to decrease 

 her entomological activities in other directions also. 

 The most pleasing portrait of her in the book (taken 

 from the oil painting in the University Court Room, 

 Edinburgh) represents her in her University costume 

 as the first woman hon. graduate of the University of 

 Edinburgh, an honour as much to the University as to 

 herself, and more gratifying to her than any other 

 acknowledgment of her entomological work could have 

 been. The title was conferred upon her on April 14, 

 1900. Her sister Georgiana predeceased her in 1896. 



At the time when Miss Ormerod commenced her 

 work in agricultural entomology much had been done 

 by VVestwood and Curtis to pave the way ; but the few 

 books on the subject were either costly or little known, 

 and no popular interest was felt in the matter. 



Miss Ormerod, however, by her reports, books and 

 lectures, revolutionised all this, and effected a work 

 equivalent to that of Riley in America, and the im- 

 portance of agricultural entomology is now universally 

 recognised, from the Government to the School Board. 

 She was also a good practical meteorologist, and 

 a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society. 



But it is much to be regretted that Miss Ormerod did 

 not live to complete her autobiography on her own 

 lines, and we cannot congratulate the editor on the 

 manner in which he has performed his task. As he 

 states in the preface, " Had the book been produced on 

 the original plan, it was proposed to name it, 

 ' Recollections of Changing Times.' It would have 

 dealt with a number of subjects of general interest, such 

 as the history of the Post Office, early records of floods 

 and earthquakes, as well as newspapers of early date. 

 The introduction 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 product of Miss Ormerod's pen, but 

 with few exceptions general subjects have been elimi- 

 nated, and it forms much more a record of her works 

 and ways than it would have done had she been spared 

 to complete it." 



NO. 1810, VOL. 70] 



Surely at the present day specialism is so great, 

 though so unavoidable, an evil, that the wilful 

 elimination of everything but entomology from the 

 chapters not actually written and edited by Miss 

 Ormerod herself is equally unfair to herself and to her 

 admirers. Had her correspondence been utilised with 

 her reports to compile an abstract of entomological 

 observations supplementary to those contained in her 

 more permanent manuals the work might have been 

 made a more worthy memorial of her; but instead of 

 this two-thirds, at least, of the volume is composed of 

 letters to various entomological correspondents with- 

 out any sort of order or classification except by corre- 

 spondents' names, and consists of disjointed observa- 

 tions on insects, and references to matters like the 

 exchange of publications, of no real permanent 

 interest or consequence, even to entomologists. Half- 

 a-dozen letters selected to show Miss Ormerod's 

 epistolary style would have been amply sufificient. The 

 only interesting portions of this section of the work \\ 

 (except the few letters addressed, chiefly to the editor, ■ 

 on personal matters like the Edinburgh degree) are <' 

 the numerous illustrations of insects reproduced from 

 Miss Ormerod's reports, &c. 



The early part of the work and the illustrations render 

 the book useful and interesting; of the latter part we 

 can only say that it is one of the most glaring in- 

 stances we have ever seen (and we have seen 

 sufficiently bad ones before) of how not to edit a 

 biography. 



SOCIAL CONDITION OF ANTHRACITE 

 MINERS. 

 Anthracite Coal Communities. By Peter Roberts, 

 Ph.D. Pp. xiii + 387. (New York : The Macmillan 

 Company; London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1904.) 

 Price 155. net. 



THE great strike of 1902, which cost 20,ooo,oooZ. and 

 led to the intervention of the President of the 

 United States, induced Dr. Roberts to make an exhaus- 

 tive study of the 630,000 persons deriving subsistence 

 from the production of the anthracite collieries of Penn- 

 sylvania, and his book should be studied by all interested 

 in the evolution of industrial society. The coalfields 

 are situated in the north-eastern portion of Pennsyl- 

 vania, and consist of scattered deposits of anthracite 

 covering an area of 480 square miles. The mining 

 population represents some twenty-six different races, 

 one-half being Slavs. Anthracite mining is about 

 eighty years old. 



In the first fifty years of the development of the in- 

 dustry the United Kingdom and Germany furnished the 

 labour required. During the past twenty-five years the 

 Slav nations have done so. Immigration into the coal- 

 fields has now virtually ceased. The present population 

 is amply sufficient to furnish the necessary labour for 

 the maximum tonnage that the collieries can produce. 

 Conditions in the industry are not such as to attract 

 labour of a high grade, and the high birth-rate of the 

 Slav population will more than supply the labour needed 

 in an industry that will necessarily soon be declining. 



