[Dr. Müller ist glücklich wieder mit der Expedition zurückgekehrt. Ich hatte gestern einen Brief von ihm. Er schreibt aus Sidney wo er bis ungefähr Mitte dieses Jahrs zu bleiben gedenkt, dann geht er wieder nach Melbourne. Er drängt auf die Beendigung der Bearbeitung, doch so gerne ich ihm gefällig sein will, mit Dampf arbeite ich nicht. Auch ist er mit mir unzufrieden, dass bei den Mimoseen seine Namen als Synonyme stehen geblieben sind.]
[Dr Mueller has safely returned again with the expedition.1 I had a letter from him yesterday. He writes from Sidney2 where he intends to stay until about the middle of this year, then he will return again to Melbourne. He is pressing for the completion of the editing, but as much as I want to please him, I am not working with steam. He is also displeased with me that in the case of the Mimoseae his names have been left as synonyms.] 3
Mimoseae
The North Australia Exploring Expedition under Augustus Gregory returned to Sydney on 25 December 1856. M had undertaken a collecting expedition from Brisbane to the Glasshouse Mountains, north of that city, and did not accompany the main party to Sydney (Gregory (1858), pp. 134-5). He arrived on 1 January 1857 (Sydney morning herald, 2 January 1867, p. 4). He left for Melbourne on 10 January (M to W. Hooker, 11 January 1857) and returned to Sydney on 9 February (Sydney morning herald, 9 February 1857, p. 4). He returned to Melbourne permanently on 27 May 1857 (M to A. Gregory, 4 June 1857).
It is probable that the letter to Sonder was written from Sydney in early January, and it is dated accordingly.
i.e. Sydney.
This was a longstanding complaint. M had previously reported to others his discontent with Sonder's preserving manuscript names as synonyms. For example, in M to W. Hooker, 27 May 1854, he wrote that he was 'disagreably surprised to see even such reappear in print, which I had long ago after a better acquaintance with the species abolished'. He continued to complain about the use of MS names as synonyms, including quoting them from Linnaea, but in the context of preparing Flora Australiensis Bentham responded: 'You caution me continually against publishing as synonyms catalogue names unaccompanied by diagnoses and I shall avoid it except where they have got within reach of Germans who seeing specimens with the names in Sonder's herbarium or referred to in the Linnaea are sure to take them up as "species neglectae" if not disposed of in some way' (G. Bentham to M, 8 October 1862). See Lucas (1995) for discussion of the general problems of nomenclature arising from M's inadequate herbarium and his collecting and labelling practices.
Later in Sonder's letter he defended the practice, although agreeing to comply with M's request. He was concerned about problems that purchasers of sets of M's plants would have or cause; indeed, the published series was as much a catalogue of the sale sets as it was a vehicle for descriptions or geographic range:
Sie werden indess mit mir einverstanden sein, dass es Dr. Müller gar nicht zum Schimpf gereicht, wenn er eine Pflanze für neu gehalten hat, die sich bei genauer Untersuchung als bekannt ergiebt. Kommen solche Synonyme nicht auch bei anderen Sammlungen vor, und hat der Verkäufer nicht auch Pflichten gegen seine Abnehmer? Ich glaube die Nichtanführung der Müller’schen Namen kann Confusion genug hervorrufen, wenn sie von dem Besitzer falsch bestimmt werden, der ohnehin unzufrieden damit sein wird, wenn er die Pflanzen nachbestimmen soll.
[You will agree with me, however, that it is no disgrace to Dr Mueller if he has considered a plant to be new which, on closer examination, turns out to be known. Don't such synonyms also occur in other collections, and doesn't the seller also have obligations towards his buyers? I believe that the failure to quote Müller's names can cause confusion enough if they are wrongly determined by the owner, who will be unhappy anyway if he has to re-determine the plants.]
Extract from W. Sonder to D. von Schlechtendal, 6 April 1857, a version of which was published in Tkach et al. (2022), Brief 31. See n. 2 below for dating rationale.
Please cite as “FVM-57-01-00a,” 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