During this period one lecture was delivered before the “Institute of Agriculture,” at South Kensington, in April, 1883, in the Lords of Council lecture hall, where as usual she was in a state of trepidation as to what might happen. The audience numbered about five hundred—two hundred and fifty of whom were Government students. The subject was “Insect Injuries to Farm Crops, and their Prevention.” A number of minor incidents were nevertheless disturbing. To begin with, the driver who had been engaged to take the lecturer first to South Kensington and again in the evening to Isleworth, started on the wrong journey first, but the mistake was discovered before he had gone very far astray. Then a chairman had failed to appear and another had to be anxiously watched for at the door. A most suitable person was at last found in the President of the Entomological Society. All went well for a time until Miss Ormerod’s sight on the left side wholly failed. Being subject to attacks of migraine from overwork, she thought one of these had come on, but on moving a little to the right she discovered that a brilliant light had been arranged to fall on the diagrams, and that to her great discomfort she had got into the line of it.
A rather amusing incident occurred as the last distraction. The object was to place the elements of Entomology before the students in the simplest form possible, but a few definitions were first necessary. They were told to realise in the words of Professor Westwood that insects were “Annulose animals, breathing by tracheæ, having the head distinct and provided in the adult stage with six articulated legs, and antennæ, subject also to a series of moultings previously to attaining perfection, whereby wings are ordinarily developed!”
The audience burst out cheering, thinking, as Professor Tanner[41] explained afterwards, that the scientific terms were being used as a joke.
Apropos of this experience she wrote on October 14, 1890, to Mr. Robert Newstead, “If I could find time I would like to form an instructive book, on the plan of which I enclose a few lines—so as to proceed gradually from a foundation well known to the pupils—thus:—
“_Q._ What is an insect? _A._ A fly is an insect, so is a moth or a butterfly, or a wasp, or a grasshopper, or a cricket.