sign of pride in his achievements or his honors. He observed, indeed, a severe reticence in regard to what he had attained. He was magnanimous and temperate toward those who opposed him, as did some of the newspapers at the time of his resignation at Louisville. This moderation was an article in his creed, but it was the expression of a spirit essentially courteous and pacific. His poise was extraordinary. He saw life in true perspective, and was thus lifted above the petty cares which consume so many lives. He was a companion of winsome sympathy, whose conversation was always give and take, with never, even remotely, a suggestion of monologue. You felt as he spoke with you that he really cared for you and your opinions.

It is no wonder that this quiet, gentle, unobtrusive scholar has left a deep impression on the lives of his pupils and of all those who came near him. One of his pupils of more than forty years ago has recently called him "my dear old professor, a man without guile, a translucent soul."

WILLIAM GILSON FARLOW.

DEC. 17, 1844 - JUNE 3, 1919.

O those who had seen Dr. Farlow during the early months of the present year, when his vigor of mind and body seemed quite unimpaired, his brief illness and unlooked-for death, which resulted from a rapidly increasing weakness of the heart, brought surprise as well as sorrow. It is seldom the privilege of a scientific man to retain, as he did, almost undiminished and to the very end, not only his physical and mental powers, but his interests and enthusiasm. One can but feel thankfulness that, in the last years of his life, he was hampered by few of the disabilities which so often afflict old age, and was granted the privilege of continuing, almost without interruption and with little hindrance, the activities to which his long and fruitful life had been devoted.

Dr. Farlow was born December 17, 1844, in Boston, where he lived with his parents until his fourteenth year, when the family, which included five other children, moved to the suburb of Newton. During the whole period of his early education, however, he attended schools in Boston, and at the Quincy Grammar and English High was awarded Franklin Medals for good scholarship.

His father, John Smith Farlow, was born in Boston in 1817 and was educated there; a public-spirited citizen, member of the State Legislature, President of the Massachusetts Reform Club; a successful business man later interested in railroads, but also a lover of the humanities; for many years President of the Newton Public Library. In music and horticulture he found his greatest pleasure, and was for a time President of the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston. Although he had no special knowledge of botany, he was very fond of plants and flowers, and was a member of the Massachusetts and Newton Horticultural Societies at whose exhibitions he was awarded many prizes.

Dr. Farlow's mother, Nancy Wight (Blanchard) Farlow, came of an old Massachusetts family; but although she had the appreciation and taste of an educated woman, she does not appear to have had any unusually pronounced tastes. It is thus from his father, if from either of his parents, that he seems to have inherited the two chief interests of his earlier life, namely botany and music.

After a year of intensive study at the Boston Latin School where he worked, for the most part by himself, in Mr. Francis Gardner's room, not reciting with the school classes, he entered Harvard College in 1862, graduating with his class in 1866. During his college course he turned his attention especially to music and natural history; he was a member, and for a year secretary, of the Pierian Sodality, in which he played the piano, and was several times soloist at its public concerts. His unusual musical ability was recognized by Mr. B. J. Lang, under whom he studied and who then enjoyed in Boston a high reputation as a teacher, and he was even urged by Professor J. K: Paine, then fresh from his studies in Germany, to take up music as a profession. Although he retained his fondness for playing the piano throughout his subsequent life, as well as his musical interests generally, his innate love of natural history, and especially of botany, as well as the influence of Asa Gray, with whom he early formed a close friendship, combined to determine his choice of a career: and despite the fact that at graduation he wrote in his class report that he had no definite plans for his future, botany was without question his predominant interest. He was a member of the Harvard Natural History Society, concerning which he has written a very amusing account, and which at that time maintained a miscellaneous collection of objects of Natural History. These included, in addition to a crocodile, a human skeleton and a turkey buzzard, an Herbarium, of which he had the honor to be appointed Curator, a guardian of whose ministrations it seems to have been sadly in need; since, as he remarks, it was then arranged

"partly on the Linnæan, partly on the Natural and partly on the Alphabetical System." His reputation as a scientific light among his fellow members is said to have been such that his name was always mentioned by them with "awed respect." He was also secretary and treasurer of the O.K. Society in his Junior year, and was greatly interested in the theatre and in private theatricals in which he often took part; his star performance being an impersonation of a ballet dancer in short skirts, which is said to have been quite inimitable. The estimation in which he was held by his classmates generally may be inferred from the fact that, at the Senior Class election, he was chosen Class Secretary.

Although he speaks at the time of his graduation of having "no definite plans for life," he appears to have kept up his botanical interests, and within a year to have made a definite decision. At this period the medical course was almost the only means by which one could acquire the training necessary for a scientific career. For this reason, and in order that, should the pursuit of botany as a profession prove impracticable, he might have another to fall back upon, he followed the advice of Gray, himself a graduate in medicine; and, after studying anatomy for a time with Dr. Jeffries Wyman in Cambridge, entered the Harvard Medical School in November, 1867. Although he never seems to have had any intention of practising medicine, he evidently took his medical studies with great seriousness; since, at the close of his third year, he won a coveted appointment as surgical intern at the Massachusetts General Hospital, under the distinguished surgeon Dr. H. J. Bigelow. That his proficiency, in surgery at least, was regarded as beyond question, seems clearly indicated by the fact that, after finishing his hospital service, when he came up for his final examinations, the only inquiry addressed to him by the examiner in this subject was, "Where do you intend to practise, Mr. Farlow?"

Where he intended to practise, he made quite clear, after receiving his medical degree in May, 1870; since immediately thereafter he betook himself to Cambridge and to Asa Gray, helping the latter with his classes, and continuing his botanical studies until, in the following July, he was appointed Gray's Assistant by the University.

In this position, which he held for two years, he took full advantage of the rare opportunity presented to gain an extensive knowledge of the vascular plants as a whole, in close association with a master whose broad-minded outlook, wide knowledge and contagious enthusiasm were in themselves an inspiration. His predominant interest,