ASTONISHING PEOPLE

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 13139, 13 September 1940, Page 2

ASTONISHING PEOPLE

THE INSECT WOMAN : ■ ; Men have for thousands of years contended with wild beasts for their share of the earth; but it was a woman of the Victorian Era who led the Avar against a far more dangerous | foe, the smallest of all creatures. I Insects destroy Man’s crops, kill [his animals, spread disease among ; his and even dispute with I' him the mastery of the world. Four I hundred thousand species have been identified. They know no bounds. They sweep over continents and across seas, disease, devastation, and famine following in their trail. Eleanor Ormrod was the first to arm man with the knowledge he needed in the fight.

Eleanor was born at Sedhury Park, in Gloucestershire, in 1828. She died at St. Albans in 1901. During her 73 years she studied and recorded the life - histories of nearly all our insect pests, many of which were practically unknown until she set to work on them. No one ever worked harder. No hours Avere too. long for her; no research was too tedious. She was a well-to-do woman, who might have lived a life of ease and luxury, but phe chose to spend her time in service to the world and her money in makA lug known her investigations:

Till Miss Ormerod/began to lish her annual reports very few farmers or -other country people kneAv of the connection between moths and beetles and the grubs or maggots found in the ground and on trees. Miss Ormerod published Ararious volumes summarising the information which she had collected on insect pests, and her books are still the- standard works on the subject. While at first she intended to deal only with insects harmful to crops, she was so often urged to take up the study of flies harmful to animals that at last she started on the trail of these creatures too, and published a pamphlet which Avas of . the greatest use to farmers: 17,000 copies her leaflet on the Avarble. fly Avere distributed at a time when from three to four million pounds Avere lost annually through this pest. Professor Huxley was one of her friends. She died soon after publishing, .the last of her annual reports, Avhich are AAdthout a break from 18,79 to 1900. Such'was the woman whose name is hardly knoAvn- to-day outside the ranks of experts.