442 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
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 Supe- 
rior region, and the Rocky Mountains and contiguous plains 
in Colorado and adjacent territories, and so to study in place, 
and with the particularity which characterized his work, the 
Cacti, the Conifere, and other groups of plants which he 
had for many years been specially investigating. “In 1880 
he made a long journey through the forests of the Pacific 
States, where he saw for the first time in the state of nature 
plants which he had studied and described more than thirty 
years before. Dr. Engelmann’s associates [so one of them 
declares] will never forget his courage and industry, his en- 
thusiasm and zeal, his abounding good-nature, and his kind- 
ness and consideration of every one with whom he came in 
contact.” His associates, and also all his published writings, 
may testify to his acuteness in observation, his indomitable 
perseverance in investigation, his critical judgment, and a rare 
openness of mind which prompted him continually to revise 
old conclusions in the light of new facts or ideas. 
In the consideration of Dr. Engelmann’s botanical work — 
to which these lines will naturally be devoted — it should be 
remembered that his life was that of an eminent and trusted 
physician, in large and general practice, who even in age and 
failing health was unable, however he would have chosen, to 
refuse professional services to those who claimed them; that 
he devoted only the residual hours, which most men use for 
rest or recreation, to scientific pursuits, mainly to botany, yet 
not exclusively. He was much occupied with meteorology. 
On establishing his home at St. Louis, he began a series of 
thermometrical and barometrical observations, which he con- 
tinued regularly and systematically to the last, when at home 
always taking the observations himself, — the indoor ones even 
up to the last day but one of his life. 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 
latest publication (issued since his death by the St. Louis 
Academy of Sciences) is a digest and full representation of 
