71 
NEWS ITEMS 
We learn from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (February 20) 
that the resignation of Dr. William Trelease, director of the 
Missouri Botanical Garden, has been accepted, with regret, by 
the board of trustees of that institution. Dr. Trelease gives as 
his reason for retirement, the necessity of greater leisure for re- 
search work. Since 1889, when he was appointed director of the 
Garden, at the suggestion of Asa Gray, Dr. Trelease has made 
the Missouri Botanical Garden one of the most important in the 
world. No successor has, as yet, been appointed. 
Dr. H. C. Cowles, associate professor of ecology at the Uni- 
versity of Chicago, has been elected second vice-president of the 
Chicago Academy of Sciences. 
The London Times states that in the old parish church of St. 
Mary, Teddington, a tablet has recently been dedicated to the 
memory of the Rev. Stephen Hales, D.D., a former vicar of the 
parish and one of the most distinguished men of science of the 
eighteenth century. A number of eminent living savants have 
for a long time been endeavoring to discover his burial place, in 
order to preserve his memory, and at length the stone recording 
his death was found in the floor of the porch of the church with 
nearly the whole of the lettering obliterated. The new tablet 
has been placed on the wall of the west porch beneath the tower 
of the old church, and bears the following inscription: 
“ Beneath is the grave of Stephen Hales. The epitaph, now 
partly obliterated, but recovered from a record of 1795, is here 
inscribed by the piety of certain botanists, A.D. 1911. ‘Here is 
interred the body of Stephen Hales, D.D., Clerk of the Closet to 
the Princess of Wales, who was minister of this parish 51 years. 
He died 14th January, 1761, in the 84th year of his age.’”’ 
Mr. Francis Darwin has written for the current number of the 
Parish Magazine an interesting account of Dr. Hales, in the 
course of which he says: “Stephen Hales has been called the 
‘father of physiology,’ and he deserves this title in regard both 
to animals and plants. His experiments on the blood pressure 
