V1 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
Boundary Survey. He had made large preparations for a greatly needed revision of at least the North 
American Cactacew, But although his collections and sketches will be indispensable to the future 
monographer, very much knowledge of this difficult group of plants is lost by his death. ' 
Upon two other peculiarly American groups of plants, very difficult of elucidation in herbarium 
specimens, Yucca and Agave, Dr. Engelmann may be said to have brought his work up to the time. 
Nothing of importance is yet to be added to what he modestly styles “ Notes on the Genus Yucca,” 
published in the third volume of the Transactions of the St. Louis Academy, 1873, and not much to 
the “ Notes on Agave,” illustrated by photographs, included in the same volume and published in 
1875. Less difficult as respects the material to work upon, but well adapted for his painstaking, 
precise, and thorough handling, were such genera as Juncus (elaborately monographed in the second 
volume of the Transactions of the St. Louis Academy, and also exemplified in distributed sets of 
specimens), Huphorbia (in the fourth volume of the Pacific Railroad Reports, and in the Botany of 
the Mexican Boundary), Sagittaria and its allies, Callitriche, Isoétes (of which his final revision is 
probably ready for publication), and the North American Loranthaceew, to which Sparganium, certain 
groups of Gentiana, and some other genera would have to be added in any complete enumeration. 
Revisions of these genera were also kindly contributed to Dr. Gray’s Manual; and he was an 
important collaborator in several of the memoirs of his surviving associate and friend. 
Of the highest interest, and among the best specimens of Dr. Engelmann’s botanical work, are 
his various papers upon the American Oaks and the Coniferw, published in the Transactions of the 
St. Louis Academy and elsewhere, — the results of long-continued and most conscientious study. The 
same must be said of his persevering study of the North American Vines, of which he at length 
recognized and characterized a dozen species, — excellent subjects for his nice discrimination, and 
now becoming of no small importance to grape-growers, both in this country and in Europe. Nearly 
all that we know scientifically of our species and forms of Vitis is directly due to Dr. Engelmann’s 
investigations. His first separate publication upon them, “The Grape-vines of Missouri,” was pub- 
lished in 1860; his last, a re-elaboration of the American species, with figures of their seeds, is in the 
third edition of the Bushberg Catalogue, published only a few months ago. 
Imperfect as this mere sketch of Dr. Engelmann’s botanical authorship must needs be, it may 
show how much may be done for science in a busy physician’s hore subsecive, 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 unrecorded, 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 interested 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 country —one of them his survivor — 
dedicated to him a monotypical genus of plants, a native of the plains over whose borders the young 
immigrant on bis arrival wandered solitary and disheartened. Since then the name of Engelmann 
has, by his own researches and authorship, become unalterably associated with the Buffalo-grass of 
the plains, the noblest Conifers 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 an- 
nals of botany may take account. It has been well said by a congenial biographer, 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 highest 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.” 
