To William Hooker   17 December 1859

Melbourne bot. & zool gardens

17. Dec. 59

My very dear Sir William

I heard lately from Dr Hooker of your protracted illness & sincerely trust, that providence will have granted for the sake of all of us, to you the fullest restoration of your health & that you may enjoy a long & serene evening after the long & labourious day of life. I write not these lines to you to entice you to write to me, for I am sorry to see any of your moments taken up for my sake, but I would not let the earliest opportunity pass, to thank you and through you also Drs Lindley & Hooker for their kindness of granting me such an illustrious sponsorship for my candidature of R.S., in which Sir Roderick Murchison with his usual urbanity & kindness is, I think, likely to join.1 —

I thought of being able to send you the 9 No of my fragmenta by this mail,2 but the printing of the last pages is not completed in time, but by next mail I hope to send the whole first vol. complete with 10 plates & index. The very excellent Asa Gray has indulgently criticised it,3 & I think the rep[o]rtorial form of this publication is good. — Mr Oldfield has returned from his W. Australian tour & I hope to send you soon a set of his specimens.

Possibly my report for 18594 will also come by next mail.

With the sincerest

attachement to you

& Dr Hooker,

[dear] Sir William

Yours

Ferd Mueller.

 

I have despatched a collector5 to the alps of New South Wales, which I believe were neither visited by A. C.6 nor any other botanist. Mr Hill writes that one of his plants of Dendrob.7 gracilicaule bore 167 spikes!

 

Dendrobium gracilicaule

1
M's nomination to the Royal Society, dated 12 January 1860 was signed 'from general knowledge' by John Bennett, John Lindley and Edward Brayley, and from 'personal knowledge' by William Hooker, Joseph Hooker, William Harvey and Robert Wight. M was not elected in the ballot on 7 June 1860, but was elected in the ballot of 6 June 1861 when Roderick Murchison, Thomas Bell, Charles Darwin, George Frere and James Martin were additional signatories to his nomination (Royal Society, London).
2
B59.12.01.
3
Gray (1859): 'The British California in the southern hemisphere, — more enlightened and more spirited than our own, — has officially organized and promoted scientific research from the first. The colony has not only its own Philosophical Institute, publishing memoirs of high character, but its Botanic Garden, Museum and Herbarium, under the charge of a Government Botanist, the able and indefatigable Dr. Mueller. Nor do they confine the energies of this officer to the Victoria Colony, but spared him to accompany, as botanist, the recent exploration by Capt. Gregory of the northern part of the great Australian continent, where an extensive and interesting herbarium was gathered. A most enthusiastic and industrious botanist himself, Dr. Mueller awakes the interest and stimulates the activity of others; and vast collections, abounding in novelties, are rapidly accumulating in his hands. He has already published numerous scattered papers, in Germany, England and Australia. The publication now commenced has the advantage of a more convenient connected form, and contains the characters of new genera and species, and rectifications of those published before, with important critical remarks &c.'
4
B60.01.01.
5
Herman Beckler. See B60.01.01.
6
Allan Cunningham.
7
Dendrobium.

Please cite as “FVM-59-12-17,” 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 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/59-12-17