Gat tinger, A. 

 1879, December 20th 

 Nashville 



TRANSLATION 



Nashville, December 20th, I879 



Dear Doctor Engelmann, 



First of all my thanks for the attention you gave to my questions. I have known 

 you by name for a long time since I read the Mexican Boundary Survey shortly after 

 it appeared, which contained your treatise on Mammillaria. 1/Ve have a good collection 

 of this genus in the Munich Botanical Garden and my oldest friend there, Dr. Ferdinand 

 Kummer, curator of the herbarium, had a very beautiful personal collection. Munich is 

 my hometown and I studied medicine there. Botany with Martius and Zuccarini who were 

 Professors of Botany there at that time. I was also acquainted with Dr. Otto Sendtner 

 who later became Professor of Botany, a specialist in mosses who raised my interest 

 and made me collect mosses and lichens with special eagerness. Gümble, brother of 

 the well known moss specialist Gümbel (Bruch Schimper & Gümbel) and now an excellent 

 geologist and mining man and a now well known moss specialist Ferdinand Arnold 

 represented the science of botany at the University of Munich between 1846-^9 in which 

 year I considered it advisable because of political reasons to go to America. k9-6k 

 I lived with a growing family practicing medicine in East Tennesee 2 x 7 meager years, 

 and here I arrived in March Gk as a refugee because of the war and worked first in a 

 hospital. I still did not find a Canaan, even though my circumstances are becoming 

 better as time goes on. 



ünfortunately, there are no people here with whom I could share an interest and 

 Dr. Gerard Jesoch (?) as far as I know was the only scientifically educated man who 

 worked passionately in his field and held a professorship here. 



Dr. Rusel lived in the northern part of East Tennesee and I in the southern part. 

 I never met him and only heard about him here in Nashville. From 59-64 I lived in 

 Ducktown in the coppermines and there I became well acquainted with the Hasslachs. 

 Next February I shall be 55 years old and while people say you are as round as a 

 Mammillaria, I am as thin as Eleocharis* I was not strong enough for such a rough 

 life, but one has to suffer in the mountain country practicing medicine and even 

 though I have become quite stiff, I collected during the last summer and fall, beside 

 my work in my office, several thousand specimens of which Curtiss alone received 

 1000. Since I started this letter, I received your Juncus and already filed it. I 

 am very grateful for this beautiful original collection and believe to have the 

 right to say as Faust« s famulus did H What I own on black and white I can carry home 

 confidently". 



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