Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/131

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BOTANY AT ST. LOUIS
127

It is a morphological study founded chiefly upon monstrosities, and it had the honor of receiving the notice and approval of Goethe, who offered to place in Engelmann's hands his notes and sketches, which intention was frustrated by his death before it had been carried out. This first paper has been very favorably commented upon, and compared with much more extended and pretentious works of a similar nature.

The spring and summer of 1832 were passed at Paris in medical and scientific studies with Braun and Agassiz as companions. He then became the willing agent of his uncles, who had resolved to make some land investments in the Mississippi Valley, and he sailed from Bremen for Baltimore in September. He joined some of his relatives

Fig. 10. Residence of Dr. Geo. Engelmann in St. Louis, Missouri:
by permission of the Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

who had previously settled in Illinois near St. Louis, and made lonely journeys on horseback through southern Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas. He finally established himself in St. Louis as a doctor of medicine late in the autumn of 1835. At this time St. Louis was a frontier town of eight or ten thousand inhabitants. Beginning in poverty, he soon built up a large practise and so established himself in his profession that he was able to go back to Germany for some months. While there he married his cousin. Miss Dora Hartmann, in June, 1840.

Again in 1856 he left his practise for a two years' absence, devoting