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 Coniferce, 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 



