ACADEMY OP SCIENCES.] BIOGRAPHY 3 



years of his life (fl873). Daniel C. Eaton, pupil of Gray and grandson of Amos Eaton, was 

 professor of botany in Yale University, with his specialty in ferns, but publishing, at this period, 

 his few papers on marine algas. Sullivant was still alive but was not publishing. Lesquereux 

 and James had taken over the mosses and C. F. Austin the hepatics. Edward Tuckerman was 

 professor of botany at Amherst College and was writing his classical papers on American 

 Lichenology. Charles H. Peck, at Albany, was acting as State botanist and beginning to 

 publish on fleshy fungi. T. F. Allen was beginning to publish on American Characeaa. In 

 Europe, Hofmeister, although still active, had passed on his mantle and task of preparing a 

 comprehensive Handbuch der Botanik to Sachs and to De Bary, and the oncoming generation 

 was deeply immersed in what has been designated the " vegetations-punkt " type of investiga- 

 tion. J. G. Agardh, at Lund, was veteran in phycology, as Elias Fries was in fungi, while 

 Muller, at Geneva, was working on the Flora Brasiliensis, with lichens as his hobby. Schwende- 

 ner (1860-1868) was publishing the series of papers on the algal types of lichen-gonidia and 

 was bringing about the fundamental and spirited discussion as to the possible dual nature of the 

 lichen-thallus, which was to be prominent for so many succeeding years. Bornet and Thuret 

 were the foremost exponents of algal morphology and reproduction. Of great importance to 

 Farlow were all of these, but possibly foremost in influence for his chosen profession was the fact 

 that Sachs had produced the second edition of his epoch-making Lehrbuch der Botanik, which 

 had not yet been translated into English and which had not, at the time, made the profound 

 impression outside of Germany which it later created. It seems worth while to mention the 

 situation outlined above, since it, as limited, had a direct influence on Farlow and his work. 

 Even the oldest of our prominent American workers of the present day and even those of Europe 

 were, at this time, not advanced beyond the grades below the university. There was no strictly 

 botanical periodical in America except the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club (1870- ), 

 botanical articles being few in production and published in the American Journal of Science or 

 the American Naturalist, but mostly in the proceedings of the few learned societies of that 

 era, such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences of Boston, the Boston Society of Natural 

 History, the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Academy of 

 Sciences, the St. Louis Academy of Sciences, and the California Academy of Sciences. The 

 National Academy of Sciences was not founded until 1863. 



From the point of view of the condition of botanical science and teaching in America, 

 where the "college" point of view still held the most considerable place in higher education and 

 where "research" was not, as yet, spelled with a capital "R," it is little to be wondered at 

 that Farlow, having followed the botanical tradition of preparing himself in medicine, having 

 associated himself with teaching in Harvard University, following his own natural bent, and in 

 accordance with Gray's sympathetic advice and desire for extending the bounds of botanical 

 instruction and specialization at Harvard, should have been attracted toward the lower crypto- 

 gams and have turned his attention to northern and central Europe for the assistance he needed 

 for his further training and orientation in this field as well as in general. As Farlow himself 

 says later on in his life (1896) : "It certainly now seems ridiculous that one who had only just 

 finished his medical studies and knew nothing about cryptogams beyond what he had read in 

 leisure moments or had picked up in the field should attempt to teach the subject. But the 

 young are courageous, not to say audacious, if they are not learned, and, it must also be admitted, 

 the demands of students for information on the subject were easily satisfied at that time." 

 Consequently we find him leaving Cambridge and Gray at the end of the second year of his 

 assistantship and setting sail for Europe in June, 1872, where he spent the next two years in 

 study and travel. He burdened himself with specimens, particularly with algse, many of them 

 from the Oregon and California coasts, collected by E. E. Hall, and C. L. Anderson. Landing 

 in England, he proceeded at once, via Copenhagen, to Lund, in Sweden, to consult and absorb 

 wisdom from J. G. Agardh, the founder of phycological taxonomy. He has left us a glimpse 

 of his visit and experiences at Lund in the charming and characteristic letters to Gray, of which 

 only too little was published in the American Naturalist in 1874. Among the west American 

 marine algse submitted to Agardh at that time were the specimens upon which he founded the 



