1920] Riddle,— William Gilson Farlow 7 
sity of Glasgow in 1901, and by the University of Wisconsin in 1904. 
In May, 1907, he attended the celebration at Upsala, Sweden, of 
the 200th anniversary of the birth of Linnaeus, and received the 
honorary degree of Ph. D. He was a member of a large number of 
learned societies and academies, in several of which he held the office 
of president. In 1876, J. Agardh, of the University of Lund, named 
in his honor, Farlowia, a genus of Red Algae found on our northwest 
coast. In 1883, Saccardo proposed the same name for a genus of 
hysteriaceous fungi, and upon the discovery that the name was 
already in use, substituted for it, in 1891, the name Farlowiella. 
No attempt has been made to list the considerable number of species 
of algae, fungi, and lichens, named in his honor. 
If one were asked to mention Dr. Farlow’s distinctive character- 
istics one would certainly speak of his memory, his wit, his versatility, 
and his kindness. 
I may be permitted to give a personal illustration of his memory. 
In February, 1915, I was working one day at the herbarium on some 
lichens collected in Switzerland. One minute, black lichen on a 
rock, I was entirely unable to place. Dr. Farlow looked at it with 
his lens and handed it back to me without a word, but with a char- 
acteristic “h’m.” The next morning, however, I received a note 
from him with the name of the plant which he had collected in Cali- 
fornia in 1883! His collection was one of the two known records 
for America, so one can judge of the rarity of the species. 
In this account of Dr. Farlow, his botanical activities have natur- 
ally been emphasized, but he was much more than a botanist. His 
wit, which showed itself constantly to those intimate with him, 
brought him a well-deserved reputation as a speaker at public dinners 
and at the meetings of the many societies of which he was a member. 
His address as retiring president of the Botanical Society of America 
given at Cleveland, January 1, 1913, and published in Science (37: 
79-86) illustrates this characteristic. But the repetition of his stories 
and “asides” in cold print is inadequate to represent him since it 
lacks the touch of his personality. 
His humor and his wide range of interests made him always wel- 
come in social life. And this life he thoroughly enjoyed both in 
Cambridge and during his trips to Europe. He was noted for his 
hospitality even in his bachelor days, and his marriage in 1900 to 
Miss Lilian Horsford brought into his home a gracious hostess whose 
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