98 Early Work in North America 



The establishment in 1871 by the United States Fish Commis- 

 sion of an investigation base at Little Harbor, Woods Hole, not 

 far distant from historic Penikese Island where Louis Agassiz had 

 had his celebrated Anderson School of Natural History, was fol- 

 lowed a few years later by the founding at Woods Hole of the 

 Marine Biological Laboratory.^'' In 1878 Farlow made for the 

 Fish Commission an important report " On the nature of -the 

 peculiar reddening of salted codfish during the summer season," ^^ 

 and within a few years his earlier reports on seaweed and marine 

 algae were outdone in significance by a 210 page elaboration of 

 "The marine algae of New England and adjacent coast.""- Of 

 the seven original trustees of the Marine Biological Laboratory, 

 Farlow was the only plant scientist; and largely through his efforts 

 botany was early recognized as a main research subject. 



His most far reaching contribution, nevertheless, was in intro- 

 ducing in this country careful culture practice and experiments to 

 describe life histories and developmental cycles of organisms 

 which cause plant diseases. His work of 1876 on " Onion smut " ^^ 

 was important because of its disclosure of the disease's fungous 

 origin and, also, in that his work perpared the way for Roland 

 Thaxter to establish its manner of infection and a suggested 

 method of prevention. In 1880, as the first of the Anniversary 

 Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History, Farlow began 

 to publish on " The Gymnosporangia or cedar apples of the 

 United States," ^* a research of several years which dwelt on the 

 relationships of Roestelia and Gymnosporangium. During the 

 next decade and a half, some of the ablest talents of early Ameri- 

 can plant pathology — Thaxter, Halsted, Louis Hermann Pamrnel, 

 and Fred Carlton Stewart, each a former student of Farlow — 

 would work at the problem of establishing satisfactorily the con- 

 nection between several species of Gymnosporangium and asso- 



supplies of the city of Boston, Bull. Bussey Inst. 2 (1): 75; On some impurities 

 of drinking water caused by vegetable growths, Rept. Mass. Board of Health etc. 

 1, suppl.: 131; In Remsen, 1., Report on a peculiar condition of the water, etc., 

 City of Boston, Dec. 143: 15, 1881. 



^^ Frank R. Lillie (and E. G. Conklin), The Woods Hole Marine Biological 

 Laboratory, 24-26, 35, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1944. 



^''Rept. U. S. Fish Comm. 1878: 969, 1880. 



"-Rept. U. S. Fish Comm. 1879: 1-210, 1882. Separates printed in 1881. 



"""Rept. Mass. Board Agric. 1876, pt. 2: 164, 1877. 



"* Ann. Mem. Bast. Soc. Nat. Hist., 1-38, 1880. 



