CONTRIBUTIONS TO WESTERN BOTANY No. 17 1 
BOTANICAL REMINISCENCES 
n I printed my notes on Botanists whom I have known I had n 
idea i kind of reception they would have, nor did I care. I felt that aby 
remarks about the older botanists would be welcome to some, as they would 
be to me to get any notes pertaining to Gray, Watson, Nuttall, Pursh, Tor- 
em, and request has come from several sources to continue them. I never 
intend to follow the beaten path, nor to trim my sails to suit readers, if they 
o not like what I write they can leave it. I think it a sin to te y the 
palatable things about people. You never get a correct mirror of them 
in that way. I have no sympathy with concealing the truth about the dead. 
I abhor hero worship. When a man sets himself up as a little god I feel 
like taking a shot at him. 
esert, responding to an insistent appeal for information I wrote 
y impressions of Engelmann, which also met with a general interest. I 
here reprint the article. 
DR. GEORGE ENGELMANN 
(Reprinted from “‘Desert’’) 
suppose in the lives of all of us there stand out men and women whom 
we feel honored to have known. One of them is the subject of this sketch. 
The other is Mrs. T. S. Brandegee, the greatest woman botanist that ever 
lived. 
Dr. Engelmann was born in 1809, and after his sega wpe in Germany 
Saige © to this country and settled in St. Louis. He belonged to the pio- 
heer age in American botany, a period when systematic botany was in the 
formative stage, ha men had to guess as to what was a genus and species; 
en men had to delve deep into the secrets of Nature to find the laws gov- 
erning the origin of the vegetable forms we call species and genera. 
From the standpoint of quality of product I consider him the greatest 
American botanist. He belonged to the age of Bentham, Hooker, Beis 
sear Engelmann and Watson. Torrey was much older, having been 
n 1798, Gray in 1810. Watson was much the youngest. All of them were 
ediitaled as physiological (ean not as systematists. They had to make 
systematic botany as we know it. We therefore find them emphasizing 
structure inordinately, and from ha foolish standpoint we have not yet got 
far away. 'y had to work under the artifical system of Linnaeus, and it 
took many years to get away from it. The great task of systematic botanists 
is to devise a system of relationship, showing the genetic origin of all plants 
in order. Engelmann had to do with this system in which the highest plants 
were considered to be dicotyledons, then the next lower the monocotyledons, 
