- 
332 Mr. C. O. Farquharson’s Five Years’ Observations 
rained, and that was my camp-bed over which I had slung 
a ground-sheet. Nice little Hepaticas and graceful little 
ferns are growing on the mud walls. I think it must have 
been the fact that I couldn’t help laughing at it all, that 
kept me well. It wasn’t official solicitude for my welfare, 
There were no funds available to buy thatch which, strange 
as it may sound, is hard to get here. And then I got that 
wonderful Lycaenid find [p. 393] and one or two others.” 
Another discomfort was an indirect result of the war— 
the disorganisation of work in his Department, bringing 
uninteresting columns of accounts and the management 
of labour. “I haven’t got near my own office the whole 
tour and am only mycologist in name,” he wrote in 
September, 1917. And nearly a year later :— 
“T have been having a most tiresome time doing up 
arrears of work (not my own) before going on leave. | 
wouldn't mind doing overtime or interesting work, but 
what I am domg any native clerk could do, a dreary 
totalling up of columns of labour expenses in the working 
of this ‘plantation. I suppose [ll get to know how much 
it takes to hoe or weed acres of crops (without the aid of 
any labour-saving machinery and by methods impossible 
to apply commercially); but how I detest the work! 
However, the mail took my mind off the dreary business.” 
And liere too, as he wrote on another occasion of the 
same uninteresting work: “If it weren't for the ants 
and the Lycaenids I'd be ill off indeed. Man cannot 
indeed live by bread alone.” 
The submarine campaign was at its worst on the West 
Coast, and Farquharson was always full of anxiety about 
his notes and precious parcels without which his observa- 
tions would lose nearly all their value. He was continually 
hearing of disasters, and losses among his friends, and 
words written in- December, Ei were prophetic of his 
own fate on the “ Burutu” : 
“T hear that over eaenee Nigerian passengers were 
drowned—off Holyhead, too, almost within sight of home ! 
Another Hohenzollern laurel ! ” 
As in his letter to Dr. A. W. Hill (D.), so, continually 
in his letters to me, Farquharson referred, with anxiety 
and evident foreboding, to the submarine menace. Of 
several passages from his letters already published (C., 
pp. 141, 142), I here reprint a single one because it is so 
clearly written in the spirit of a last message. It is very 
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