Farl

A farl (reduced form of the Scots fardel) is any of various quadrant-shaped flatbreads and cakes, traditionally made by cutting a round into four pieces.

In Northern Ireland, the term generally refers to soda bread and to potato bread or cakes (potato farls). While soda bread can also be baked as a normal loaf, that used in an Ulster fry breakfast is made as farls (that is to say, flat rounds about 3/4 inch thick which are then cut into quarters). Modern commercially mass-produced potato farls, however, are often rectangular in form.

In Scotland today, the word is used less than in Northern Ireland, but a farl can be a quarter piece of a large flat scone, bannock, or oatcake. It may also be used for shortbread when baked in this particular shape.

Etymology

The word may be related to fallaid in some way. However, the Dictionary of the Scots Language says that farl is a shorter form of fardel, the word once used in some parts of Lowland Scotland for "a three-cornered cake, usually oatcake, generally the fourth part of a round". In earlier Scots fardell meant a fourth or quarter.

William Gilson Farlow

William Gilson Farlow (1844–1919) was an American botanist, born in Boston, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard (A.B., 1866; M.D., 1870), where, after several years of European study, he became adjunct professor of botany in 1874 and professor of cryptogamic botany in 1879.

Farlow corresponded with Caroline Bingham and Jacob Georg Agardh collaborating in the identification and classification of species of algae previously unknown to science.

In 1899 he was president of the American Society of Naturalists; in 1904 president of the National Academy of Sciences; in 1905 president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and in 1911 president of the Botanical Society of America.

He received honorary degrees from Harvard University, the University of Glasgow (LL.D in 1901), and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Among his publications are: