544 
NATURE 
[Juuy 15, 1975 

after the war broke out he obtained a commission as 
captain in the Rifle Brigade, and went to the Front 
in April. On July 2 he was killed by a shell in 
Flanders, to the great grief of all who knew him. 
It is unfortunate that his opportunities for original 
work were not greater. There is little doubt that, had 
circumstances favoured, he would have attained high 
distinction in this direction. 
THE joint session of the Aristotelian Society, the 
British Psychological Society, and the Mind Associa- 
tion was held on July 3 and 5. On July 3 Prof. Dawes 
Hicks presided, and an interesting discussion took 
place between Prof. G. F. Stout and Mr. Bertrand 
Russell. It was opened by a paper in which Prof. 
Stout criticised adversely the theory of judgment as 
a multiple relation put forward by Mr. Russell in 
‘Problems of Philosophy’? as a solution of the 
problem of truth and error. Mr. Russell now declared 
that he was himself dissatisfied with the theory and 
could not defend it, though not for the reasons brought 
against it by Prof. Stout. He still found himself in 
profound disagreement with the latter on the funda- 
mental question of the nature of universals. On 
July 5 Prof. Percy Nunn presided. The meeting was 
devoted to the discussion of a symposium on ‘ The 
Import of Propositions,” by Miss Constance Jones, 
Prof. Bosanquet, and Dr. Schiller. 
THE greater part of a very large skeleton of the 
Pleistocene southern elephant (Elephas antiquus) has 
been discovered in a river terrace in the grounds of 
the Royal School of Military Engineering at Upnor, 
near Chatham. The specimen was buried in stiff clay, 
and all the remains are well preserved except the com- 
paratively fragile skull. By permission of the War 
Office and the commandant of the school, and with 
the valuable help of Capt. H. L. Bingay, the geo- 
logical department of the British Museum (Natural 
History) has been engaged for some time in excavat- 
ing the skeleton, and the work is now nearly com- 
pleted. One of the preparators of the museum, Mr. 
L. E. Parsons, has hardened and packed the bones, 
under the direction of Dr. C. W. Andrews, and the 
collection will shortly be sent to the museum for final 
preparation. The skeleton is so nearly complete that 
it can probably be mounted, when it will rival, if not 
exceed in size, the great skeleton of Elephas meri- 
dionalis in the Paris Museum, which measures about 
14 ft. in height at the shoulder. 
Tue Ipswich Museum has for some time past made 
a very strong feature of the department of prehistoric 
archeology, and has collected extensively from the 
uniquely rich district of East Suffolk. The museum 
collections now include a large and representative 
series of pre-Palzolithic and Paleolithic flint imple- 
ments, and also numerous examples of specimens 
referable to the later Cave and Neolithic periods. 
Among the later additions may be noted a large series 
of implements, bones, etc., from the Grimes Graves 
flint mines, Moustier flints from Baker’s Hole pit 
in the Thames valley, and implements of different 
ages presented by Dr. A. E. Peake and Rev. H. G. O. 
Kendall. The museum authorities have just purchased 
the entire series of local specimens, and the Palzolithic 
NO. 2385, VOL. 95] 
implements from the Dovercourt gravels collected by 
the late Lieut.-Col. Underwood, of Ipswich, and these 
make a very valuable addition to the collections. The 
skeleton of the Neolithic (or early Bronze age) youth 
found with an ornamented drinking vessel by Mr. 
Reid Moir at Wherstead, near Ipswich, is now on 
exhibition, together with other interesting human 
skulls, and the remains of extinct animals. 
Tue award of the Hanbury medal to Mr. E. M. 
Holmes, curator of the Pharmaceutical Society’s 
Museum, for high excellence in the prosecution of 
original research in the natural history of drugs, is a 
fitting recognition of Mr. Holmes’s unwearied activi- 
ties in the domain of pharmaceutical and botanical 
science. In 1897 Mr. Holmes was the first recipient 
of the Fliickiger medal, and his numerous contribu- 
tions to pharmacography and botany up to that date 
are enumerated in the Pharmaceutical Journal of Sép- 
tember 4, 1897. Since then he has contributed abaut 
two hundred articles and notes to the journal, and has 
also found time to continue his studies of the alge, 
and of the British seaweeds in particular, of which 
group he is recognised as one of the first authorities. 
Among plants of pharmaceutical importance which 
have been the subject of Mr. Holmes’s researches may 
be mentioned, in particular, jaborandi, Siam benzoin, 
strychnos, Natal cinchona, plants yielding 
myrrh, resins, etc. 
plants which are the sources of poisonous drugs gener- 
ally have been the subject of Mr. Holmes’s careful 
and critical investigation, and pharmaceutical science 
is deeply indebted to him for the valuable work he 
has done in connection with medicinal plants and 
their products. It is largely owing to Mr. Holmes’s 
wide botanical knowledge that his contributions to 
pharmacography rest on so sure and certain a founda- 
tion. 
aloes, 
On June 30 (June 17, old style) Dr. Alexander 
Fischer de Waldheim, director of the Imperial Botanic 
Garden of Peter the Great at Petrograd completed the 
fiftieth year of his scientific and administrative activi- 
ties. The event was made the occasion of a fitting 
ceremony with presentation of addresses, etc., in the hall 
of the herbarium at the garden. Dr. Fischer de Wald- 
heim commenced his botanical career as privat-docent 
at the University of Moscow, and later became pro- 
fessor of botany at the University of Warsaw. On the 
death of A. F. Batalin in 1897 he was appointed 
director of the gardens at Petrograd. It will be re- 
membered that in 1913, on the 200th anniversary of 
the founding of the Petrograd garden by Peter the 
Great, the name of the institution was changed by 
rescript of the Emperor to that of the Imperial Botanic 
Garden of Peter the Great, and a representative scien- 
tific gathering took place at Petrograd on the occa- 
sion. Under the present director’s able administration 
the garden has been greatly improved, and the scien- 
tific activities of the institution largely extended. 
With its museum, herbarium, and library, laboratory, 
seed-control station, and school of horticulture, the 
Imperial Botanic Garden forms a very complete insti- 
tution, and its scientific publications are of the first 
| importanee. 


Plants yielding arrow poisons and . 
