330 Mr. 0. O. ian aon’ Five Years’ Observations 
complete the various researches already initiated by 
him. 
“The additional losses of C, Mason in Nyasaland, and 
of H. Dollman of N. Rhodesia, workers of promise, both 
through illness contracted while on duty, are a further 
setback to the advance of the science, inasmuch as, in 
spite of the vastness of the British African possessions, 
the number of enthusiastic workers is so very limited, 
the Governments not yet being alive, apparently, to 
the paramount importance of Entomological research.— 
Ws Au.” 
In his admirable letter to Dr. A. W. Hill (D.), Farqu- 
harson gives, as Prof. Trail wrote to me, ‘‘ an exceptionally 
good statement of such work as fell to him and of how to 
face it,” and the letter was reprinted in the “ Aberdeen 
University Review” (E.) because Prof. Trail wished his 
students to read it. 
Farquharson’s main object in this letter was to emphasise 
the essential importance of understanding all that pro- 
motes the healthy life of the normal plant, and of looking, 
in the first instance, to the conditions of growth rather 
than to the deus ex machind of a parasitic fungus or insect 
enemy. 
He believed “that every mycologist ought to be de- 
prived of his microscope (and perhaps even of his pocket 
lens) for at least the first tour of his service, and perhaps 
for two years, and compelled to raise normal crops with no 
artificial aids of any sort”’ (D., p. 354). 
“The essential remedy ” for palms supposed to be dying 
from the attacks of Bacillus coli, he found to be * proper 
cultivation, growing . . . in the proper place on a proper 
soil in the proper way, with plenty of light and air” 
(D., p. 359). 
And he was always ready to make fun of an excessive 
eagerness to rely upon “economic” methods. Thus, 
when he found, for the first time in Africa, gnats of the 
genus Harpagomyia being fed by Cremastogaster ants, he 
wrote :— 
“ Our sanitary authorities if they get wind of this, wall 
have out an Ordinance decreeing the destruction of all 
Cremastogaster nests, ranking them with the neglected 
sardine tin as friends of the mosquito and foes of humanity. 
I once heard an authority on these matters declare that 
