FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



did not understand me. So tonight I will spik in ze English." 

 Whereupon MacDowell at the other end of the table (or possibly 

 it was Professor Sedgwick) sang out in a purposely villainous 

 French, "lei ong parle frangais," which caused a great laugh and 

 confused the Frenchman, who nevertheless went on in some- 

 what halting English. 



At this dinner I sat between Dr. Chadwick and the famous 

 botanist Professor W. G. Farlow. They were great friends and 

 had been fellow students at Harvard. They chaflfed each other 

 unmercifully and very wittily, Pd give a farm, if I had one, if 

 I could remember some of the clever things that they said! 



I became well acquainted with Professor Farlow afterwards. 

 He was one of the most charming men I have ever known, and 

 one of the wittiest. He was president of the American Society 

 of Naturalists a year or so later. Their annual meeting was held 

 at New Haven. Farlow invited me to come on and speak at the 

 final dinner. As I remember the subject was "Zoology under the 

 Government." It happened that the Society had been having a 

 general discussion that afternoon on the topic of research in the 

 universities, and I took my cue from that. But just before I 

 began to speak one of the men whispered to me that although 

 Farlow was an old bachelor, it had just been announced that he 

 was engaged to be married. And so I began my remarks by 

 asking the old conundrum: "Why does a married man live 

 longer than a bachelor?" — stating that it was apropos of some- 

 thing I had just heard about, and of course I gave the answer: 

 "He doesn't. It only seems longer." And then I went on with 

 my remarks. I referred to the afternoon discussion and said that 

 many of the teachers regretted greatly that they had no time for 

 research, and that very possibly they envied the government 

 men for that reason. But, I pointed out, that while the govern- 

 ment men apparently had all of their time for research, just as 



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