Charles A. White

“ Engelmann's energy, judgment, and common sense.
“As a botanist, no one who has worked in America has excelled him in patience and judgment, and no other American botanist has ever worked out harder problems or elucidated so many difficult groups of plants. All this is the more marvelous when it is remembered that botany was only his pastime. He was actively engaged all his life in professional duties as a physician, and his botany was all done at odd moments. ”

“ Having received through his correspondent, Frau Marianne von Willemer, a copy of Engelmann'a treatise, Goethe made earnest inquiry after the young author, saying that he had completely apprehended his ideas concerning vegetable morphology and had shown a peculiar genius for their development. So strong was his confidence in Engelmann's ability that he offered to place in the hands of that young botanist his whole store of unpublished notes and sketches. ”

“ Engelmann had long exerted upon Mr. Henry Shaw, the founder of the Missouri Botanical Garden and School of Botany. A cordial friendship existed between them for many years, and it is well known that Dr. Engelmann's influence largely prevailed in shaping Mr. Shaw's plans for and the destiny of his public benefactions.
For well nigh forty years after Dr. Engelmann established himself with his young wife at St. Louis his life was unusually prosperous and free from the serious ills which fall to the lot of most men. ”

“ A more industrious man never lived.
“My high estimate of Dr. Engelmann is only faintly indicated by these brief notes, but I shall always be glad to say or do anything in my power to keep green the memory of that excellent man to whom I feel deeply indebted.”
Professor Sargent has improved several opportunities to honor the memory of Dr. Engelmann. Besides the memoir which he published in “Science,” he dedicated to his friend volume II of his Sylva of North America, and he has added another brief sketch of his life on page 88, volume VIII of the same great work. ”

“ It may not be generally known that Dr. Engelmann made much fuller notes on specimens that he studied than most workers do, but such was the fact. Taking up a specimen for study, in the intervals between professional calls, he invariably sketched its characteristic details and noted its peculiarities, using for this purpose the backs of prescription blanks, several pads of which were of course always at hand. These memoranda and sketches are also preserved at the Garden Herbarium. For various reasons they possess unusual value. ”

“ In that year I was engaged in preparing the report on the forest wealth of the United States for the Tenth Census, and I asked him to join me in the journey to the Pacific coast. We traveled together in the summer of 1880 for about four months, covering the ground from Vancouver and the lower Frazer river to the Mexican boundary in southern Arizona.
“Dr. Engelmann was then rather infirm, crippled with rheumatism, and very stout. His energy, courage, and endurance were a surprise and delight to us. He never hesitated to try to get up the steepest mountains or to take long drives and rides. ”

“ 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 annals of botany may take account. ”

“ The confidence which he inspired in his medical clientage was such that as he grew older he could take long vacations and resume his practice almost at will. Still, it was always difficult for him to refuse medical aid to those who sought it, and even up to the last year of his life there were old friends to whose families he was the only acceptable medical adviser and whose appeal for aid he could not refuse. ”

“ Upon those journeys, especially those in the western part of North America, he not only studied many plants that were then new to him, but he for the first time saw in the living condition plants that he himself had many years before described and named from dried specimens. ”

“ Engelmann's botanical work are his various papers upon the American Oaks and Coniferæ, 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 Europe. Nearly all that we know scientifically of our species and forms of Vitis is directly due to Dr. ”

“ That journey, although a difficult one for a man of his age, was of great benefit to him physically. His shattered spirit also was much revived and, among his friends, he resumed and sustained his life-long habit of cheerfulness of manner. Professor Sargent's remarks upon the effects of that journey on Dr. Engelmann are given on following pages.
In 1883 his health was so far improved that, with his son and daughter-in-law, he revisited Europe, spent some time with his kindred, and pursued certain lines of botanical study. ”

“ Engelmann took it up, we were supposed to have only one indigenous species, and that not peculiar to the United States; but he immediately brought it up to fourteen species without going west of the Mississippi valley. In the year 1849, after an investigation of the whole genus in the materials scattered through the principal herbaria of Europe and this country, he published in the first volume of the St. Louis Academy of Science a systematic arrangement of all the Cuscutæ, characterizing seventy-seven species, besides others classed as perhaps varieties. ”

“ He turned to his beloved plants, seeking relief in study; but life and a continuance of its labors seemed to be almost hopeless. His condition changed but little during the remainder of the winter, but when in the spring Professor Sargent came with the proposition that he should join him in a journey through the forests of the Pacific Coast region he accepted it. ”

“ Engelmann's investigations. His first separate publication upon them, 'The Grape Vines of Missouri,' was published in 1860. His last reëlaboration of the American species, with figures of their seeds, is in the third edition of the Bushberg Catalogue, published only a few months ago [1883] .
“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 man's horæ subsecivæ and in his occasional vacations. Not very many of those who could devote their whole time to botany have accomplished as much. ”

“ The opportunities and stimulus for study afforded by this great university were eagerly improved, and they were happily enhanced by the congenial association of his fellow-students, among whom were Karl Schimper and Alexander Braun. With the latter especially an intimate friendship and correspondence were preserved unbroken until the death of Braun, in 1877. ”

“ Generally he was badly used up at the end of a hard day, and would lie upon the ground in evident pain for an hour or two after supper, but he would rally and go to work to put up his plants of the day's collecting, working conscientiously over them for hours, sometimes when the rest of us were asleep. ”