xlvi Travis. Acad. iSci. of St. Louis. 



It was my privilege to meet Dr. Engelmann about the date 

 of the organization of the Academy, in the working-room of 

 Professor Asa Gray at the Botanical Garden of Harvard Uni- 

 versity. He had come to Cambridge to collaborate with Dr. 

 Gray upon certain genera of North American plants which he 

 had made peculiarly his own. The picture of a rugged, 

 withal kindly, middle-aged man, working with quick and sure 

 insight through great piles of herbarium specimens, pausing 

 now and again to discuss with his friend some character of a 

 species with which the student at the little table by the 

 window was occupied, is to-day as vivid in memory as it was 

 in his actual presence fifty years ago. 



Ten years later the impression was revived. The erstwhile 

 tyro in botany came to St. Louis to take up the practice 

 of medicine in this city. Through the kindness of Professor 

 Gray, he was enabled to enter on new relations with Dr. 

 Engelmann, then as for years past and to come, a busy prac- 

 ticing physician holding a foremost place in the ranks of the 

 profession in St. Louis. But the able and busy physician 

 was still the devoted and indefatigable botanist, utilizing the 

 briefest intervals of release from professional duties in the 

 prosecution of the special work in hand, accumulating a 

 noble herbarium of original types, tilling volumes with his 

 personal notes and drawings, and, from time to time, publish- 

 ing the comprehensive and perfectly elaborated contributions 

 to knowledge which won for him the recognition of leading 

 scientists of the world as a co-worker in their own class. 



Dr. Engelmann's scientific activities were not confined to 

 botany. A pioneer in an as yet undeveloped region, he real- 

 ized the importance of studying climatic conditions. For 

 more than thirty years he observed, recorded and tabulated 

 the daily rain-fall, and barometric, thermometric and hygro- 

 metric readings — anticipating, by a full third of a century, 

 the local observations of the U. S. Weather Bureau, and 

 making it possible for the investigator of to-day to utilize 

 continuous, authentic records supplementing those accumu- 

 lated through existing agencies. 



Dr. Engelmann was firmly grounded in natural science out- 



