SKETCH OF DR. WILLIAM FARE. 407 



grant me superannuation allowance to the extent of my full pay. 

 I have served under you nearly forty years, I have taken with you 

 three censuses and I feel confident that I can leave my case in your 

 hands." 



Dr. Farr's health failed so rapidly after his retirement that he was 

 soon pi-actically lost to the field of scientific labor in which he had 

 been so long engaged, " and which he had graced," says an English 

 journal, "not only with exceptional intellectual power, but with a 

 genial modesty which charmed all with whom he was brought into 

 contact." His scientific friends, who always regretted that the value 

 of his services had not been recognized and better appreciated by 

 the Government, took measures to raise a testimonial fund for him. 

 Subscriptions were obtained to the amount of nearly a thousand 

 pounds sterling, and this sum was invested at his request, and al- 

 lowed to accumulate for the benefit of his daughters. An effort is 

 now to be made to obtain a grant from the civil list to his daughters, 

 in connection with which it has been remarked that the value of his 

 work has been more unreservedly acknowledged on the Continent and 

 in America than in his own country, where it has not yet received 

 the recognition it is entitled to at the hand3 of the nation and its 

 Government. 



Dr. Farr's admirable personal and social qualities were well known 

 and esteemed by all who had the privilege of meeting him and being 

 associated with him at scientific assemblies. He was modest, kindly, 

 genial, and bright in his manner, and had a generous appreciation of 

 the services of others. " He was deservedly popular," writes one of his 

 biographers, " in the best sense of that word, and, while the friends who 

 mourn his loss on public and private grounds are innumerable, it seems 

 impossible, to those who knew him, to believe in his having a single 

 enemy." 



"As a vital statistician," says an English professional writer, in 

 noticing his death, " Dr. Farr's name and work are inseparably bound 

 up with the rise and progress of a science which he had made peculiarly 

 his own. ... It was the national faith in Dr. Farr, personally, as a 

 vital statistician that invested with so much confidence the registrar- 

 general's statistics, which shed so clear a light upon the black figures 

 of our urban mortality statistics, and thus strengthened the hands of 

 other workers in the field of sanitary reform." 



