154 Obituary. 
RUTH HOLDEN (1890-1917). 
I N previous numbers of the New Phytologist some account has 
been given of the lives and work of British Botanists who have 
fallen on the battlefields of France, and it is now my sad privilege 
to pay a tribute to the memory of an American citizen and Botanist, 
Ruth Holden, who fell a victim to disease while serving with a 
British Medical unit in Russia. Ruth Holden was born at 
Attleborough, Massachusetts, in 1890 and was the youngest child of 
Dr. John Holden ; she was educated at Attleborough High School 
and later at Radcliffe College, the Women’s Department of 
Harvard University. She graduated B.A. in 1910 and in the 
following year became a Master of Arts of the University. 1 On the 
completion of her student’s course, Miss Holden devoted herself 
more especially to the anatomical study of recent and fossil Conifers 
and was a loyal adherent to the views of her teacher, Professor 
Jeffrey. In 1912 she paid her first visit to England to attend a 
“ Summer Meeting ” at Cambridge and to examine collections of 
fossil plants. Soon after her return to America, Professor Jeffrey 
wrote : “Miss Holden has returned and has taken a great fancy to 
Cambridge of the Motherland. She is going to make every effort 
to make a year of it with you, next year or possibly a little later. 1 
am glad you like her ; she is certainly exceptional among the young 
women with whom I have come in contact.” In 1913 she returned 
to this country as a Harvard Travelling Fellow and began work at 
Cambridge, attending lectures and pursuing palaeobotanical research. 
Her training had been rather intensive than extensive and one of 
her aims was to obtain a good grasp of Botany in the wider sense 
while taking every advantage of the opportunities of research 
afforded by British collections and fossiliferous localities. She made 
collections of petrified Jurassic wood on the Yorkshire coast and 
on the coast of Sutherland, and many of the specimens she insisted 
on cutting herself with an old machine which had long been neglected 
in the basement of the Botany School. A collection of Indian 
plants, both Palaeozoic and Mesozoic, lent to me by the Director of 
the Indian Geological Survey, supplied much interesting material 
which she attacked with her usual thoroughness and skill: her 
method was to make a preliminary study of several recent forms 
and in dealing with the fossils she spared no pains or ingenuity in 
extracting the last ounce of evidence from the indifferently preserved 
1 I am indebted to Miss Jordan Lloyd, Fellow of Newnham College, for 
several of the facts mentioned in this article. A.C.S. 
