84 BOTANICAL GAZETTE Ijanuary 



advice, after graduation, he studied medicine in preparation for a 

 scientific career. Receiving his Doctor's degree in 1870, he became 

 Gray's assistant, and had the privilege of teaching and studying with 

 him for two years. Although, during this association, he gained a 

 comprehensive knowledge of the vascular plants, his preference for the 

 non-vascular types, and especially the algae, was already apparent, 

 since it is with the latter that his first two papers, "Cuban seaweeds" 

 (1871) and "List of the seaweeds or marine algae of the south coast of 

 New England" (1871-1872), are concerned. 



Gray's interests, being primarily systematic, were naturally im- 

 pressed on Dr. Farlow, and the former evidently contemplated the 

 conversion of his pupil into a collaborator who might in a measure do 

 for the lower cryptogams what he had himself done for the flowering 

 plants, even to the point of preparing a manual. Although no portion 

 of this program was carried out, the preparation of a textbook of cryp- 

 togamic botany was in Dr. Farlow's mind more or less constantly, 

 until the idea was finally abandoned in the early nineties. It was partly 

 with this in view that he was advised by Gray, after serving two years 

 as his assistant, to visit Europe, come in personal relations with European 

 botanists, acquire a knowledge of their methods of working and of teach- 

 ing, and above all to learn as much as possible of the lower forms, 

 especially the fungi and lichens. He therefore sailed for Liverpool in 

 June 1872, and went first to Scandinavia, where he saw, among others, 



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the elder Fries, as well as Areschoug and Agardh and their herbaria. 

 He continued his journey as far as St. Petersburg, where he desired to 

 see the algae in the Ruprecht Herbarium. Although he also traveled 

 in Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, and England, meeting many 

 well known botanists, he passed most of his time at Strassburg in 

 DeBary's laboratory, spending also some weeks in an intensive study of 

 the lichens with Dr. J. Muller at Geneva, and of the algae with Bornet 

 and Thuret at Antibes. DeBary was then professor of botany and 

 regent of the German University, which had replaced the French Academie 

 after the close of the Franco-Prussian War, and was reputed to know 

 more about the fungi, their morphology and development, than anyone 

 else in the world. Dr. Farlow was thus able to fill this, the most 

 serious gap in his equipment, and to acquire, among other things, a good 

 foundation in general plant anatomy. Here he came in contact with 

 Schimper, then an old man and the most distinguished member of the 

 scientific faculty, Graf Solms, recently appointed ausserordentlich pro- 

 fessor, and various students attracted by DeBary's courses: Stahl 



