[In zwei Monaten wird eine neue Sendung Pflanzen von Müller’s letzter Reise ankommen, vielleicht giebt es auch Sämereien dabei. Der letzte Brief ist von Ende Mai d.J., da war Dr. Mueller wieder gänzlich von seiner schweren Krankheit hergestellt.]
[In two months a new consignment of plants from Mueller's last journey will arrive, perhaps there will also be seeds in it. The last letter is from the end of May this year, when Dr Mueller was completely recovered from his serious illness.1]
M left for his 'journey into the Australian alps' on 1 November 1854 (M to J. Foster, 31 October 1854) and returned to Melbourne on either 8 or 9 March 1855 (M to F. Krichauff, 9 March 1855; M to W. Haines, 10 March 1855). M mentioned in both these letters that he had had a severe illness, describing it as 'gastrischem Fieber' [gastric fever].
Letter not seen. The text given here is extracted from W. Sonder to D. von Schlechtendal, 22 September 1855, a version of which was published in Tkach et al. (2022), Brief 28.
The letter is mostly concerned with the arrangements for publishing the series Plantae Muellerianae in Schlechtendal's journal Linnaea, complaining about the slowness of contributors to whom Sonder had sent specific families or groups of families of plants. The letter also includes a comment about M's view of Sonder's own work: 'Dr. Müller meint, ich könne noch viel rascher arbeiten, aber das verstehe ich nun einmal nicht' [Dr Mueller thinks I could work much faster, but I simply don't understand that].
Please cite as “FVM-55-05-00a,” in Correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, edited by R.W. Home, Thomas A. Darragh, A.M. Lucas, Sara Maroske, D.M. Sinkora†, J.H. Voigt† and Monika Wells accessed on