264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are his various papers upon the 'American Oaks' and the Coniferce, 

 published in ' Transactions of the St. Louis Academy ' and elsewhere, 

 the results of Ions-continued and most conscientious study. The same 

 must be said of his persevering study of the North American vines, of 

 which he at length recognized and characterized a dozen species ex- 

 cellent subjects for his nice discrimination, and now becoming of no 

 small importance to grape-growers, both in this country and in Eu- 

 rope. Nearly all that we know scientifically of our species and forms 

 of Yitis is directly due to Dr. Enselmann's investigations." The 

 list of his papers published in " Coulter's Botanical Gazette " for 

 May, 18S4, which is not quite complete, contains about a hundred 

 entries. 



Dr. Engelmann made several journeys of considerable length in 

 the interest of science, or for geographical observation. Two of them 

 were to the Rocky Mountains and Colorado, and New Mexico ; a 

 longer tour was to the Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee and North 

 Carolina ; and a third, in 1880, to the Pacific coast and Oregon, where 

 " he saw for the first time in their native home the plants described 

 thirty years previous." 



Dr. Engelmann's meteorological observations constitute another 

 important feature of his scientific work. They were begun as soon as 

 he had established himself in St. Louis, and were kept up unintermit- 

 tingly from New-Year's-day of 1836, to February 2, 1884 two days 

 before his death or during a period of forty-eight years. He visited 

 his instruments regularly and systematically, every morning at seven 

 o'clock, at noon, and at nine o'clock in the evening ; and " even in the 

 last week he was seen sweeping a path through the snow in his garden 

 to reach his maximum and minimum thermometers." His last publi- 

 cation was a digest of the thermometrical part of these observations. 

 In offering this paper to the St. Louis Academy of Sciences at nearly 

 the last meeting of that body which he attended, he apologized for 

 not waiting till the half-century had been completed before present- 

 ing his results, saying that they could not be appreciably different 

 after two or three years more. He had been endeavoring to discover 

 some law eroverninor the weather, but had failed to do so. A member 

 of the Academy expressed the hope that the half -century would be 

 completed. Dr. Engelmann replied that he had some misgivings on 

 the subject. 



Dr. Engelmann was known, through his life in St. Louis, as a pub- 

 lic-spirited citizen, who always had the interests of the town unselfish- 

 ly at heart. He also showed a practical interest in the efforts of the 

 European peoples to gain their freedom ; and, when the revolutions 

 broke out in 184S, he became the head of an organization which was 

 formed at St, Louis to assist them. He took part, in 1836, in the 

 organization of the "Western Academy of Science," which, coming 

 before the times were ripe for such an organization, had only a short 



