SMYTHE-MALLERSON PRIZE AWARDED TO AMERICAN EXPLORER

The Caledonian Conclave and the Board of Directors of St. Ardbeg's Hospital have announced that the winner of the 2007 Smythe-Mallerson Prize is "Colonel" G. Appleton Lee of Louisville, Kentucky. "Colonel" Lee --so named after his rank of honorary sergeant in the Kentucky Militia-- was until recently the owner of the Lee Distillery and producer of "Appleton's Single-Barrel Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky." He died late last November while on an expedition in the Canadian arctic.

"Colonel" Lee and his expedition --by its full title, the "Great Northern Peat Expedition Sponsored by the Kentucky Bourbon Council"-- left the northern reaches of Nunavut in late September, searching for the hypothetical traces of a long-lost, and perhaps mythical, peat-producing civilization. In mid-October, "Colonel" Lee sent back a tantalizing fragment of organic matter, thought by some to possibly be part of a substance bearing similarities to something hypothetically akin to peat. The publication of these preliminary results in this winter's Journal of the Society for Malt Research and Inebriation Science created a small furor in the scientific world. But "Colonel" Lee was unable to enjoy even this early success. He walked away from camp one night and was found the following morning, several miles away, dressed only in his long underwear, and convulsively clutching a towel. The cause of death, although unclear, was assumed to be exposure. The last entry in "Colonel" Lee's diary stated, cryptically: "Oh, my God. I was right! They have found us.... don't panic!"

The Caledonian Conclave and St. Ardbeg's Hospital feel that the Smythe-Mallerson Prize could go to no more deserving person than "Colonel" Lee: a man who gave his life in the interest of science and led the way towards possibly greater discoveries.