12 WILLIAM GILSON FARLOW— SET CHELL [MEMOms [ vo I Ixxi I ; 



Several of these did come to the point of publication, such as a list, followed by a supplementary 

 list, of works on North American fungi (1887 and 1888), a host index of the fungi of the United 

 States (1888 and 1891), and finally the first part of the magnum opus, the Bibliographical Index 

 of North American Fungi (1905), which included the fungi only as far as Badhamia, the rest 

 remaining stdl in card form (approximating 350,000 references) awaiting funds to make it avail- 

 able to the many to whom it would be of the greatest benefit. These indices have been of 

 inestimable influence in the work on North American fungi, both as to those published and those 

 unpublished. Information and criticism founded on the data contained in them has been 

 freely given, especially in correspondence, and has tended to keep down errors, unnecessary 

 publication, and constructively to keep accuracy up to a high level. One of the greatest boons 

 to our current work on fungi would be conferred by the publication of this last great index and 

 adequate provision for its continuance from Farlow's farseeing and most admirable inception. 



While the number of titles of the writings of William Gilson Farlow is ample, while the 

 variety of topics he touched is very large, and while the new facts and considerations brought 

 forward by him are very considerable, yet his critical knowledge of the various groups upon 

 which he worked was so enormous and so detailed that we turn from what he has left us to 

 that which we feel that he had to give with a sense of most serious loss. His very early publi- 

 cation on the apogamy in certain ferns was clearly a student publication, a happening in a 

 laboratory where its importance was realized by an able instructor of wide experience. Far- 

 low's main interest, however, did not lie in that direction and he did not follow up that lead, 

 although he retained a deep interest in apogamy and related phenomena, as I well remember 

 from experiences somewhat over a quarter of a century later whde a student in his laboratory 

 and in connection with pteridophyte apospory. His earliest papers concerned themselves 

 with the marine algae, taxonomic and critical, and these led up to what many of us, and it seems 

 to me justly, consider his most characteristic and outstanding publication: viz, his account, 

 really manual, of the marine algae of New England and adjacent coasts. In arrangement, 

 in content, and especially in critical and explanatory remark, this small volume is a model, 

 refreshing, instructive, and intriguing to personal effort on the part of reader or student. 

 Farlow's matchless humor and keen characterization show themselves again and again. For 

 example, speaking of the common Leathesia, he notes that it is "sometimes called potatoes 

 by the unromantic dwellers on the shore, " or again, in speaking of a nomen nudum, Calli- 

 thamnion Tocwottoniensis of Olney's list, which he says: "fortunately for printers and the 

 throats of American algologists has never been described. " It was one of Farlow's sincere 

 desires that a new manual of New England algae be prepared and issued, and the task fittingly 

 devolved on Frank Shipley Collins, who had accomplished so much in that direction, but he, 

 too, passed away without having completed the task. 



Through his connection with the Bussey Institution and the turning of his attention from 

 his favorites, the marine algae, to what later came to be called plant pathology, or phyto- 

 pathology, Farlow gave us the results of his work on c.ertain species and groups of parasitic 

 fungi. The potato rot and the grapevine mildew in particular led him to the Peronosporaceae 

 and their relatives, and his papers on these organisms were for long years authoritative. Onion 

 smut, the black knot of cherry, and many miscellaneous plant diseases caused him to write 

 other illuminating papers, but his chief attraction along these lines seemed to be the group 

 of rusts, or Uredineae, as they were called for so long a period. His pioneer paper on the 

 Gymnosporangia led to a series of investigations, first, in the way of cultural studies by 

 Thaxter and, later, by others, to determine their exact heteroecism. His critical notes on that 

 troublesome question, synonymy, particularly vexatious in the group of the Urcdineae, and 

 his notes on some species in the third and in the eleventh centuries of Ellis's North American 

 Fungi (18S3) are among his important contributions. He likewise elucidated and arranged 

 the Synchitrium species of the United States. All these— Synchitria, Peronosporaceae, Usti- 

 agineae, and Uredineos — parasitic groups of fungi and of both biologic and economic interest, 

 he touched but to adorn, and we feel bereft that out of his encyclopedic knowledge of these 

 groups he did not find the opportunity to yield still more than he did in permanent form. We 



