WILLIAM GILSON FARLOW. 



489 



Seymour, were published by the Carnegie Institution in 1905 and 

 although the publication has not been continued, the collection of data 

 went on until his death. This was perhaps his greatest work, and 

 some idea of its magnitude can be obtained from the facts that at the 

 time of his death the Index included about 350,000 references, and the 

 312 pages published in 1905 brought the alphabetical list of that day 

 only through Badhamia. As the work is essentially finished, it is 

 hoped that it may soon be published since it will be of untold value to 

 specialists. 



Another great work left unfinished at his death is an account of 

 selected species of American fleshy fungi, which was to be illustrated 

 with over 100 colored plates. These have been executed under his 

 direction with the utmost care, but although the plates were finished, 

 the pressure of his other botanical undertakings prevented him from 

 even beginning the descriptions of the species. It would be well, if 

 these descriptions could be supplied by another hand, so that what 

 promises to be a classical work may see the light. 



In discussions of nomenclature he threw his powerful influence in 

 favor of sane and stable methods for naming fungi, thus helping to 

 check the extreme radicalism of many American botanists, and pre- 

 serving relations with the better men abroad. 



But his papers alone — ■ important as they are — did not make him 

 "the creator of cryptogamic botany in the United States." It was 

 the man himself — his personality, his breadth, his wise conservative 

 judgment, his learning, his helpfulness, and his devotion to truth. 



American botanists were brought in contact with this commanding 

 influence by means of his papers and his students and even more 

 effectively by his direct personal intercourse with them, for he was 

 always ready to give them generous help, and they were more than 

 ready to make use of it, submitting their puzzles to his excellent judg- 

 ment, reinforced as it was by a reading that covered the whole litera- 

 ture of the cryptogams, not in abstracts, but in the original sources; 

 borrowing specimens from his herbarium for comparison; asking him 

 to look up references in journals hard to find outside his library; or 

 even sending him specimens to determine. Some idea of the volume 

 of this work is given by the fact that a single correspondent confesses 

 to 100 letters in his own handwriting. 



His achievements earned wide recognition. Two genera were 



