94 Early Work in North America 



Professor Goodale, under appointment as assistant professor of vege- 

 table physiology, will take the whole work of instruction in botany off my 

 hands ; but if a former assistant and pupil, Dr. Farlow, now with DeBary, 

 proves capable of it, as I hope, he will, I trust, take up the work in 

 systematic botany. His fancy, however, is for Cryptogamia. 



Gray had written Farlow that what was " most wanted " in the 

 United States was instruction and research in the cryptogamia, 

 fungi especially. They arranged to acquire the late M. A. Curtis's 

 collection of fungi; and Farlow, himself an enthusiastic student 

 of the algae, co-worker with D. C. Eaton, S. T. Olney, Edward 

 Tuckerman, and other American correspondents of Gray, was 

 given on his return charge of cryptogamic botany at the Bussey 

 Institution as an assistant professor of botany. The catalogue 

 for the year 1874-1875 announced a course to be given by 

 Farlow, " Vegetable anatomy particularly the microscopic study 

 of wood. Rudiments of cryptogamic botany. Fungi, especially 

 those injurious to vegetation. Special investigations on the dis- 

 eases of plants will be pursued." " Until 1879 when his gradually 

 enlarged course of instruction at the Bussey Institution was trans- 

 ferred to the Cambridge campus of Harvard, Farlow gave instruc- 

 tion also at Cambridge two days a week and in the summer school. 

 His laboratory for this teaching was in Lawrence Hall; and, con- 

 tinuing his study of the marine algae on which he had published 

 before going abroad, he maintained an "improvised laboratory" 

 for this purpose at Woods Hole. About 1875 laboratory practice, 

 in addition to lecture attendance, became a requirement in the 

 Natural History curriculum under Goodale and Farlow; and this 

 applied in the course in Advanced Botany in which the study of 

 cryptogamic botany was an elective. Farlow's laboratory and 

 herbarium were moved several times: from Lawrence Scientific 

 School to Boylston Hall and finally to several locations in the 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology including the Agassiz addition 

 and botanical quarters of the total building. Still later the Farlow 

 Herbarium was established on Divinity Avenue in its own building. 



By 1874 the botanical department at Harvard was said ^^ to 

 have " a thoroughly furnished laboratory, garden and greenhouse " 



^° Ernst A. Bessey, Tlie teaching of botany sixty-five years ago, Symposia Com- 

 memorating Six Decades of the Modern Era in Botanical Sciences 1: 1-3, reprinted 

 from the lotra Slate Coll. Jour. Sci. 9(2 and 3): 15-17, 1935. 



^* Ernst A. Bessey, quoting the university catalogue, op. cit., 16. 



