BOOKS REVIEWED. 



205 



as it supplied a long-felt want, Kollar's " Treatise on Insects injurious 

 to Gardeners, Foresters, and Farmers, with Notes by Prof. Westwood," 

 and Curtis's "Farm Insects" both being out of print and by no means 

 " up to date." A second and much enlarged edition was published in 

 1890. Besides the reports and this manual, this indefatigable writer 

 published various other works which are enumerated in her biography. 

 Owing, no doubt, to her extreme anxiety to give full credit to all her 

 correspondents who had given her information as to infested crops and 

 the means they had employed in combating the foe, she printed a great 

 deal of quite unnecessary matter, so that at times when consulting her 

 writings it is very difficult to find the required information, and the value 

 of her works would be much enhanced were they judiciously edited. 

 How much her labours were appreciated is shown by her appointment 

 as " Consulting Entomologist " to the Royal Agricultural Society, her 

 account of which is very amusingly told on page 76 ; as External Examiner 

 in Agricultural Entomology at the University of Edinburgh ; and the 

 conferring on her of the degree of LL.D. by the same University. She 

 also received the Victoria Medal of Honour from the Royal Horticultural 

 Society. 



Miss Ormerod was one of an old Lancashire family (the Ormerods of 

 Ormerod). She was born in 1828 at Sedbury Park, in Gloucestershire, 

 near the banks of the Severn. She was the youngest of a family of ten, 

 and appears to have been a child of a very happy disposition, a quality 

 which remained with her all her life. She continued to live at home 

 until her father's death in 1873, when the home was broken up, her 

 mother having died some years previously. She then lived with her 

 sister Georgiana (to whom she was devotedly attached) for three years in 

 Torquay ; they then moved to Isleworth, and subsequently to Torrington 

 House, St. Albans, where her sister died in 1896. Miss Ormerod survived 

 her sister some five years, and after a protracted illness, which was borne 

 with true Christian fortitude, died on July 19, 1901. This book is very 

 well got up, well printed on good paper, which is not too heavy. It is 

 illustrated with no less than thirty plates, and a great number of illustra- 

 tions in the text ; many of the former are portraits of her family and of 

 places in the neighbourhood of her old home. 



" Freaks and Marvels of Plant Life, or Curiosities of Vegetation." 

 By M. C. Cooke, M.A., LL.D. Fifth thousand, revised. 8vo., 463 pp, 

 with nearly 100 woodcuts. (S.P.C.K., London, 1904.) 4s. 



This new and revised edition of a useful and interesting volume, 

 brought up to date, will be welcome to all who are interested in the 

 curiosities of plant life. It was originally issued as a popular explanation 

 of the researches and hypotheses associated with the name of Darwin, and 

 contains chapters on such carnivorous plants as the Sundews, Venus's 

 Fly-trap, Side-saddle Flowers, Pitcher Plants, and the Minor Carnivora. 

 To these are added much useful information on Gyration of Plants, 

 Heliotropes or Sunflowers, Twiners and Climbers, Sensitive Plants, Sleep 

 of Plants, Meteoric Flowers, Hygroscopism, Dispersion of Seeds, Mimicry. 

 Vegetable Giants, Luminosity in Plants, Mystic Plants, and Flowers of 

 History. The most interesting phenomena of plant life are thus 



