FARLOW, William Gilson, botanist, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 17 December 1844. He was graduated at Harvard in 1866, at the medical department of that University in 1870, and spent several years in Europe, studying under Henri A. de Bary in Strasburg, and also with Eduard Bornet and Oustave Thuret. In 1874, after his return to the United States he was appointed adjunct professor of botany at Harvard and in 1879 was elected to the chair of cryptogamic botany.

He is a member of scientific societies in Europe and in the United States, and besides being a fellow of the American association for the advancement of science, received in 1879 an election to the National academy of sciences. Professor Parlow's publications have been principally devoted to marine algae, fungi, and diseases of plants. These have gained for him a high reputation among cryptogrammic botanists. He wrote the accounts of the "Progress of Botany," in the reports of the Smithsonian institution from 1879 till 1886, and he has also contributed valuable articles on his specialties to the reports of the U. S. fish commission and to the Massachusetts board of agriculture. He has published " The Potato Rot" (Boston, 1875); " Diseases of Olive and Orange Trees" (1876); "The Gymnosporangia, or CedarApples of the United States" (1880); " The Marine Algae of New England "(Washington, 1881); and has in preparation (1887) "Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany."