518 GEORGE ENGELMANN. 



aulumii of 1835. St. Louis was then rather a frontier trading-post 

 than a town, of barely eight or ten thousand inhabitants. He lived to 

 see it become a metropolis of over four hundred thousand. He began 

 in absolute poverty, the small means he had brought from Europe com- 

 pletely exhausted. In four years he had laid the foundations of success 

 in his profession, and had earned the means for making a voyage to 

 Germany, and, fulfilling a long-standing engagement, for bringing to a 

 frugal home the chosen companion of his life, Dora Hartsmann, his 

 cousin, whom he married at Kreuznach, on the 11th of June, 1840. 

 Ou his way homeward, at New York, the writer of this memorial 

 formed the personal acquaintance of Dr. P^ngelmann ; and thus began 

 the friendship and the scientific association which has continued un- 

 broken for almost half a century. 



Dr. Engelmann's position as a leading physician in St. Louis, as 

 well among the American as the German and French population, was 

 now soon established. He was even able in 1856, witliout risk, to 

 leave his practice for two years, to devote most of the first summer to 

 botanical investigation in Cambridge, and then, with his wife and 

 young son, to revisit their native land, and to fill up a prolonged vaca- 

 tion in interesting travel and study. Li the year 18G8 the family 

 visited Europe for a year, the son remaining to pursue his medical 

 studies in Berlin. And lastly, his companion of nearly forty years 

 having been removed by death in January, 1879, and his own robust 

 health having suffered serious and indeed alarming deterioration, he 

 sailed again for Germany in the summer of 1883. The voyage was 

 so beneficial that he was able to take up some botanical investigations, 

 which, however, were soon interrupted by serious symptoms. But 

 the return voyage proved wonderfully restorative ; and when, in eaily 

 autumn, he rejoined his friends here, they could hope that the unfin- 

 ished scientific labors, which he at once resumed with alacrity of spirit, 

 might still for a while be carried on with comfort. So indeed they 

 were, in some measure, after his return to his home, yet with increasing 

 infirmity and no little suffering until the sudden illness supervened 

 which, in a few days, brought his honorable and well-lilled life to a 

 close. 



In the latter part of his life Dr. Engelmann was able to explore 

 considerable portions of his adopted country, the mountains of North 

 Carolina and Tennessee, the Lake Superior region, and the Rocky 

 Mountains and contiguous plains in Colorado and adjacent territories, 

 and so to study in place, and with the particularity which character- 

 ized his work, the Cacti, the Coniferae, and other groups of plants 



