Record. xxvii 



inate at isolated points, and two balls have started in 

 opposite directions. Wood which gives little flame shows 

 the phenomenon to best advantage, but the balls preserve 

 their identity and travel slowly along even when completely 

 surrounded by flames of the burning w^ood. 



Messrs. George G. Brimmer and J. E. Dame, of St. Louis, 

 and Mr. Ernest J. Palmer, of Webb City, Missouri, were 

 elected to active membership. 



One person was proposed for active membership. 



April 1, 1901. 



President Engler in the chair, thirty-three persons present. 



On behalf of a committee appointed at a previous meeting 

 to take suitable action on the death of the late Judge Nathan- 

 iel Holmes, a charter member of the Academy, the following 

 memorial was read, adopted and ordered recorded in the 

 minutes: — 



Judge Nathaniel Holmes, for mauy years a valued member of the Acad- 

 emy of Science of St. Louis, died at his home in Cambridge, Mass., March 

 1, 1901. 



He was born in Peterborough, New Hampshire, January 2, 1815. He was 

 a graduate of Harvard of the class of 1837. In 1839 he was admitted to 

 the bar, and later he established himself in St. Louis. In 1846 he was Cir- 

 cuit Attorney. His name appears in the list of charter members of the Acid- 

 emy, and at the first regular meeting on March 10, 1856, he was of the com- 

 mittee which reported a constitution and by-laws for the government of the 

 Academy. At this meeting he was chosen Second Vice-President, and a 

 member of the Council. At the January meeting the next year, he was 

 chosen Corresponding Secretary. This position he continued to hold almost 

 continuously until 188;^, when he retired from the practice of his profession 

 and removed to Cambridge, Mass. 



During 1866 and 1867, while acting as judge of the Supreme Court of 

 Missouri, he was relieved of the duties of Corresponding Secretary, but he 

 then served as Second Vice-President, and the frequency with which his name 

 appears in the proceedings indicates that he even then took an active part 

 in the work of the Academy. From 1868 to 1873 he acted as Royall Pro- 

 fessor of Law at the Harvard Law School. On his return to St. Louis he 

 resumed his services to the Academy, and during the next ten years he was 

 untiring in his efforts in its behalf. He was not himself a worker in sci- 

 ence, but he followed the work of others in this country and abroad with 

 the greatest interest. He was particularly and from the first interested in 

 the ideas of Darwin and the evolutionists who followed him. 



In the early years of its life he did a great service to the Academy by 



