Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/339

Rh reached an age of seventy-three years. As a woman, Miss Ormerod maintained the potentialities of her sex by being the first lady member admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, and we believe also of the Entomological Society; while she still further carried the standard by being the recipient of the degree of LL.D. of the University of Edinburgh, for the first time a female distinction in the Scottish capital.

It is, however, in her twenty-four Annual Reports that the work done can be properly estimated. Farmers, agriculturists, and others recognized her as the authority to whom to apply for advice as to combating, if not overcoming, the plagues of noxious insects. An entomologist reading these Reports in a purely technical spirit might sometimes mutter "compilation," but this they never were, except in the sense that the sum of all human knowledge is a compilation. As a real student, she sought the best authorities; as an honest woman, acknowledged the sources from which she had obtained her information, and there that matter ended; her advice as to practical endeavour was her own, based on a wide experience, and in this sense compilation might as easily be charged against every historian. To know what has been done is the object of the publication of our annual 'Zoological Record,' and to have little knowledge of it is the weakness of weak zoologists.

The death of Miss Ormerod and the termination of her gratuitous services raises the whole question as to whether the time has not arrived for the appointment of a governmental bureau, where these matters—of vital interest to agriculture—should be entirely dealt with. America has long led the way in this enterprise, and we may eventually live to see entomology recognized as one of the most beneficent sciences. When this takes place the name of Miss Ormerod will be remembered as that of the pioneer of the movement, and as one who approached her subject with the grip of a man and the love of a woman.

Another writer who had most intimate relations with the deceased will now add some personal recollections.