2 WILLIAM GILSON FARLOW— SET CHELL [MBMOIES t vo"xxt 



During the year following his graduation he continued his botanical interests and, taking 

 the advice of Gray and following in the footsteps of most of his botanical predecessors in this 

 country, resolved to proceed to the doctorate in medicine as a preliminary and possibly also 

 as an alternative to entering the field of botany. He spent a portion of this year in studying 

 anatomy under Dr. Jeffries Wyman, in Cambridge, himself an enthusiastic naturalist, and 

 entered the Harvard Medical School in Boston in November, 1867. He entered upon and 

 carried through his medical studies with the zeal and thoroughness characteristic of him, and 

 at the end of his third year he won a coveted appointment as surgical interne at the Massa- 

 chusetts General Hospital in Boston under the distinguished surgeon Dr. H. J. Bigelow. He 

 obtained his medical degree in May, 1870, and his duty done, his anchor cast to windward, he 

 relinquished the favorable opportunity of advancing in medicine as he had earlier that of 

 entering upon a career in music. 



His medical education finished and with no intention of practicing, he returned again to 

 Cambridge, studying with Asa Gray and even helping Gray with his classes. He was formally 

 appointed to an assistantship with Gray in July, 1870, in which position he continued for two 

 years. He succeeded Horace Mann, who had died during Gray's absence in Europe, and at Gray's 

 request attempted to give more instruction in cryptogamic botany than had hitherto been 

 given. With such an inspiring and enthusiastic principal as Gray, he undoubtedly absorbed 

 and otherwise gained an extensive knowledge of the flowering plants and vascular cryptogams, 

 but his chief attention seems to have been directed toward the marine algae, of which Gray 

 had obtained a considerable collection for an American botanist through his friendship and 

 connection with William Henry Harvey, who had written the Nereis Boreali-Americana, the 

 first account of our American marine algas, and who with J. Whitman Bailey had worked over 

 and reported on the algae of the United States exploring expedition, from Charles Wright, from 

 J. G. Agardh, of Lund, and others. He used to tell, with some amusement and for the instruction 

 of those who later were studying in this same field, of his lack of the sense of the importance of 

 certain numbers noted on some of the specimens and how he nearly lost for future generations 

 the valuable specimens distributed by Harvey from Ceylon, from the Friendly Islands, and from 

 Australia. At the same time, another of Gray's pupils, Daniel C. Eaton, of Yale University, 

 was occupying himself with marine algae and both cooperated with the United States Fish Com- 

 mission under Spencer F. Baird in work on the southern coast of New England. Farlow spent 

 the summer of 1871 at Woods Hole, on the southern shore of Massachusetts, with the wonderful 

 corps of naturalists which Baird had assembled there. Eaton afterwards joined with Farlow 

 and Dr. C. L. Anderson, of Santa Cruz, Calif., in issuing a series of dried specimens in fascicle 

 form of the marine algae of North America, but soon relinquished the algse into Farlow's exclusive 

 charge. During this period of his life, Farlow came into correspondence with J. G. Agardh, of 

 Lund, in Sweden, sending him many rare specimens and receiving determinations, criticisms, 

 and specimens in return. He began during this period of Iris assistantship to prepare and 

 publish his earlier papers on the marine algae. During his assistantship he introduced the study 

 of the lower cryptogams into the Harvard curriculum, a novelty in American educational 

 practice. 



It will be of interest as well as instructive to glance for a moment at the botanical situation 

 in the United States at the period of Farlow's assistantship to Gray (1870-1872). Gray 

 himself, at 60, was meditating retirement from teaching and administrative duties and was 

 negotiating with Charles Wright as to the work in the herbarium. He was also preparing for 

 the addition of a lecture room and laboratories (completed late in 1871). Sereno Watson was 

 with Gray at that time, whither he had proceeded (1870) to complete his account of the plants 

 of King's expedition. George Lincoln Goodale, who joined Gray as assistant, was destined 

 (1873) to take over the subject of "Vegetable physiology." The corporation of Harvard 

 University had started (1870) the organization of the Bussey Institution, a school of agriculture 

 and horticulture, for which plans had been made by the founder as early as 1835 in a will proven 

 in 1842 and funds turned over to Harvard University by the trustees of the founder in 1861. 

 John Torrey was still alive and professor of botany in Columbia University, although in the last 



