On Plant Pathology and Ra( timuology 97 



for the Societ)' for the Promotion of A^t;riailtural Science, was 

 prepared an " Enumeration of the Pcronosporeae of the United 

 States," -* in which he reviewed species of the genera in his collec- 

 tion, together with those added since 1876. Specimens were fur- 

 nished him by botanists over the nation, many of whom — Arthur, 

 iVssey, Halsted, H. W. Harkness, Peck, A. R. Seymour, Spalding, 

 and William Trelease — were at one time or another his students 

 or regular correspondents. To this study he appended an index 

 of host plants of the species of Peronospora and Cystopus. The 

 rusts became one of hiS' specialties in plant disease study, and in 

 1878 he began to publish on these, presenting in the Proceedings 

 of the American Acadeiny of Arts and Sciences'-'^ a short paper 

 " On the synonymy of some species of Uredineae." 



During his lifetime, Farlow accumulated a vast fund of knowl- 

 edge of lichens, mosses, algae, and fungi. In 1920 G. P. Clinton 

 said -^ of this, 



We have, or have had, botanists who surpassed him in knowledge 

 concerning each of these groups, save the fungi, but none who equalled 

 him in familiarity with them all. He was truly entitled Professor of 

 Cryptogamic Botany. Just as surely as the old time Professor of Natural 

 History has passed out of existence, so, to the mind of the writer, he 

 represents the last of those who were able satisfactorily to cover the wide 

 field of cryptogamic botany. 



Farlow's knowledge of the fleshy fungi became second only to his 

 knowledge of parasitic fungi, and he was an authority on algae.-® 

 He studied the deteriorating effect in water supply of certain 

 lower algae and related organisms, and, his conclusions demon- 

 strating importance on the matter of water purification, his reports 

 to the Massachusetts Board of Health and the w^ater board of the 

 city of Boston were recognized as " notable contributions " -^ on 

 the subject. 



^^ Proc. 4th Meet. Soc. Prom. Agric. Set. (combined with Proc, 5th Meet.), 

 17-20. 



-" 13: 251. 



^''Phytopathology 10 (1): 1-8, Jan. 1920. 



"W. A. Setchell, op. cit., 13; Wm. Randolph Taylor, William Gilson Farlow, 

 promotor of phycological re.scarch in America," Farlow/a 2(1): 53-70, Jan. 1945. 



-'A pioneer of public health W. T. Sedgwick, op. cit., 60; W. A. Setchell, 

 op. cit., 5; W. G. Farlow et ai, Algae: in Report on a peculiar condition of the 

 water supplied to the city of Boston 1875-76, Rept. Cochituate Water Board, 

 Boston 10, 1876; W. G. Farlow, Remarks on some algae found in the water 



