446 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



Imperfect as this mere sketch of Dr. Engelmann' s botani- 

 cal authorship must needs be, it may show how much may be 

 done for science in a busy physician's horce subsecivce, and in 

 his occasional vacations. Not very many of those who could 

 devote their whole time to botany have accomplished as much. 

 It need not be said, and yet perhaps it should not pass un- 

 recorded, that Dr. Engelmann was appreciated by his fellow- 

 botanists both at home and abroad, that his name is upon the 

 rolls of most of the societies devoted to the investigation of 

 nature, that he was " everywhere the recognized authority in 

 those departments of his favorite science which had most in- 

 terested him," and that, personally one of the most affable 

 and kindly of men, he was as much beloved as respected by 

 those who knew him. 



More than fifty years ago his oldest associates in this coun- 

 try — one of them his survivor — dedicated to him a mono- 

 typical genus of plants, a native of the plains over whose bor- 

 ders the young immigrant on his arrival wandered solitary 

 and disheartened. Since then the name of Engelmann has, 

 by his own researches and authorship, become unalterably as- 

 sociated with the Buffalo-grass of the plains, the noblest Coni- 

 fers of the Rocky Mountains, the most stately Cactus in the 

 world and with most of the associated species, as well as with 

 many other plants of which perhaps only the annals of botany 

 may take account. It has been well said by a congenial biog- 

 rapher, that " the western plains will still be bright with the 

 yellow rays of Engelmannia, and that the splendid Spruce, 

 the fairest of them all, which bears the name of Engelmann, 

 will still, it is to be hoped, cover with noble forests the high- 

 est slopes of the Rocky Mountains, recalling to men, as long 

 as the study of trees occupies their thoughts, the memory of 

 a pure, upright, and laborious life." 



