GEORGE ENGELMANN. 443 
the thermometrical part of these observations for forty-seven 
years. He apologizes for not waiting the completion of the 
half-century before summing up the results, and shows that 
these could not after three more years be appreciably dif- 
ferent. 
A list of Dr. Engelmann’s botanical papers and notes, col- 
lected by his friend and associate, Professor Sargent, and 
published in Coulter’s ‘ Botanical Gazette” for May, 1884, 
contains about one hundred entries, and is certainly not 
quite complete. His earliest publication, his inaugural thesis 
already mentioned (De Antholysi Prodromus), is a treatise 
upon teratology in its relations to morphology. It is a re- 
markable production for the time and for a mere medical 
student with botanical predilections. There is an interesting 
recent analysis of it in “ Nature” for April 24, by Dr. Mas- 
ters, the leading teratologist of our day, who compares it with 
Moquin-Tandon’s more elaborate “Tératologie Végétale,” 
published ten years afterwards, and who declares that, ‘‘ when 
we compare the two works from a philosophical point of view, 
and consider that the one was a mere college essay, while the 
other was the work of a professed botanist, we must admit 
that Engelmann’s treatise, so far as it goes, affords evidence 
of deeper insight into the nature and causes of the deviations 
from the ordinary conformation of plants than does that of 
Moquin.” 
Transferred to the valley of the Mississippi and surrounded 
by plants most of which still needed critical examination, Dr. 
Engelmann’s avocation in botany and his mode of work were 
marked out for him. Nothing escaped his attention; he drew 
with facility; and he methodically secured his observations 
by notes and sketches, available for his own after-use and for 
that of his correspondents. But the lasting impression which 
he has made upon North American botany is due to his wise 
habit of studying his subjects in their systematic relations, 
and of devoting himself to a particular genus or group of 
plants (generally the more difficult) until he had elucidated 
it as completely as lay within his power. In this way all his 
work was made to tell effectively. 
