174 A. F. BLAKESLEE, ROLAND THAXTER, AND WILLIAM TRELEASE 
privileged to know him and study under his supervision saw his manifest 
interest in their work and imbibed some of his unobtrusive enthusiasm 
over his own work. It is unhkely that any student who came near enough 
to him in space or age or mentahty really to know him, remembers him more 
vividly in any respect than as a kind friend — observant, thoughtful, and 
helpful, but with a tact that prevented any impression that he saw the need 
of the help that he gave. 
In the history of American botany. Professor Farlow figures as the 
personality through whom thallophytes passed into the field of college 
botany. Classic work had been done on them by men not filling college 
chairs, and voluminous work of lasting va'ue continues to be done by such 
men: but it was his privilege to teach as well as to investigate in this field. 
He considered himself a botanist rather than a phycologist or a mycologist, 
and he never called himself a phytopathologist. 
Many of his published papers deal with the algae, and his opinion on 
our seaweeds was taken everywhere and always as authoritative ; but he did 
not train many men in their study. When his own opportunity to work 
under a master came, it was the fungi that he elected, and De Bary to whom 
he went; and his greatest service as a teacher and an investigator was 
rendered in this special field of botany, out of which the half-segregated 
practical applications of plant pathology evolved during his lifetime. 
Though never very robust, and subject to frequent distressing if not 
serious ailments. Dr. Farlow was an indefatigable worker and an insatiable 
reader — never satisfied with what somebody said that somebody else had 
said. During the later years of his life he was freed from the burden of 
teaching, but compelled to shoulder a business responsibility involving the 
administration of large financial interests. He neither had nor apparently 
wished the relaxation commonly considered the due of a septuagenarian. 
Like the friend and mentor of his youth, Asa Gray, he died in the harness; 
and the great herbarium and library that he has left to Harvard University 
with a liberal endowment will keep in memory the debt of his Alma Mater 
and of the botanical world to him, our foremost authority on the thallo- 
phytes, as effectively as the greatest student of American flowering plants 
is commemorated in the Gray Herbarium of the same institution. 
The traits which marked Professor Farlow's mature ' and professional 
life were forecast in his descent and development. He was born and 
educated in Boston. His parents were of New England stock, and his 
father in addition to being a successful business man was active in public 
service and a supporter of horticultural and musical organizations. As a 
student he was as brilliantly diverting as his intimates found him to be in 
later life, with a penchant for natural history. He graduated from Harvard 
College in 1866 and from the Harvard Medical School in 1870, and for the 
next two years assisted Professor Gray in the botanical department of the 
college. The next two years were spent in Europe, partly in travel and 
