Klem — The History of Science in St. Louis. 117 



of science among men of learning at home and abroad. 

 His early stay in America lie spent in study in and 

 around St. Louis, carrying his investigations to southern 

 Illinois, southern Missouri, and into Arkansas. The re- 

 ports which Dr. Engelmann made upon the resources of 

 the Mississippi Valley in the vicinity of St. Louis were 

 the principal features of a periodical called "Das West- 

 land," published in Heidelberg in the interests of Ger- 

 man emigration to the Mississippi Valley. 



Dr. Engelmann was not only one of the leading medi- 

 cal practitioners, but one of the foremost botanists of his 

 day. During many years of an active, useful life he 

 found sufficient time, in the leisure hours of his practice, 

 to devote to a series of most valuable scientific investi- 

 gations. In addition to his professional and botanical 

 labors, he was a zealous meteorologist. On establishing 

 his home in St. Louis, he began a series of thermometrical 

 and barometrical observations, which he continued regu- 

 larly and systematically for nearly fifty years — antici- 

 pating by a full third of a century the local observations 

 of the United States Weather Bureau. After his death 

 the Academy published his observations covering a pe- 

 riod of forty-seven years. 



In 1859 Dr. Engelmann published a paper concerning 

 the elevation of St. Louis above sea level. This was an 

 important paper for the reason that St. Louis was then 

 the point upon which were based the computations for 

 determining the altitudes of such places in the Far West 

 as were visited by the early exploring expeditions of 

 Nicollet, Fremont, Emory, and others. Dr. Engelmann, 

 after a series of barometric observations in 1853, deter- 

 mined a directrix of 404.9 feet for the city of St. Louis — 

 a figure which differed by only 7.8 feet from the 412.7 

 feet mark as determined later on by exact leveling of gov- 

 ernment departments, and by only 2.2 feet from the orig- 

 inal 410.5 of Nicollet, which was made in 1841 by bar- 

 ometric determinations based upon data furnished in 

 part by Dr. Engelmann himself. 



