4 Rhodora [JANUARY 
lost no time in following his inclination is shown by his publication 
a year after his return from Europe of “A list of the Marine Algae 
of the United Síates."! This was merely an annotated list but it 
was followed in 1881 by the * Marine Algae of the New England 
and the adjacent coast" which included keys, descriptions, critical 
notes, and plates. This still remains our only scientific manual of 
the seaweeds of this region. 
At the same time, the fresh-water algae received his attention 
and he was one of the first to recognize the practical importance of 
these plants in connection with water-supplies, as shown by his paper 
entitled: “Remarks on some Algae found in the Water-Supplies of 
the City of Boston." To the Annual Report of the Massachusetts 
State Board of Health for 1879, he contributed a longer paper on 
the same subject. "This has been reprinted by Prof. G. C. Whipple 
as “one of the classics on state sanitation."? "The paper is not a 
technical one but is intended for general reading and is written in a 
clear style and enlivened by some characteristic passages. It was 
the period when, through the work of Pasteur and Koch, the germ- 
theory of disease was becoming prominent. The public was easily 
alarmed by anything that suggested germs. This led Dr. Farlow to 
say: “It is desirable that all who, in any sense, have charge of the 
public health, should have some familiarity with the common forms 
of plants likely to pollute drinking-water; because, as the matter 
now stands, the public are at the mercy of any person who, armed 
with a compound microscope and a supply of Latin and Greek names, 
chooses to alarm the neighborhood by the announcement of the 
appearance in the water-supplies of plants whose injurious nature is 
supposed to be in direct proportion to the length and incompre- 
hensibility of their names." 
Probably no field of Cryptogamic Botany is attracting more atten- 
tion and more workers at the present time than the study of the 
fungous diseases of economic plants. In this field, also, Dr. Farlow 
was a pioneer. A paper in 1875 on “The Potato Rot’’* was based 
on the first of a series of important studies, in connection with which 
the fungi were investigated both from the practical and the system- 
1 Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts and Sci. 10: 351-380. 1875. 
? Bull. Bussey Inst. 2: 75-80. 1877. 
3 G, C. Whipple, State Sanitation, 2: 39-46. Harvard Univ. Press. 1917. 
4 Bull. Bussey Inst. 1: 319-338. 1875. 
