Kew April 11th/62
My dear Mueller
To day arrived the box of your Herbarium,2 which shall be duly attended to & returned safe & sound, with I hope some useful masses of additions from our Herbm.
A few days ago I sent to Pamplin for you the Henslow books,3 all but DC. Plantes Grasses,4 which my Father wished for its being a large paper copy. I have told Pamplin to have the loose parts of Ann Sc. Nat:5 bound at my expense & the volume completed up to the end of the year
Your dissecting knives shall go in a few days — a very few shillings will cover that & I hope you will accept them from me. I had some glovers needles (3 angled) which I find better than knives &c for most purposes.6
Thanks for your hint about putting Achlamydeae &c &c amongst the Thalamiflorae; but did you ever do so & then try to make a practicable arrangement of the whole — we have tried over & over again & find it utterly impossible so to arrange the order that you can refer your plants to them. We have spent days on this kind of operation — many such schemes look easy on paper or in theory - but when you come to define & describe it is a totally different matter: however we regard Thalamifl. Calycif. & Carollifl. just as artificial as Monochlam &c7 We therefore keep all 4, as confessedly artificial groups, but absolutely necessary for practical purposes — it is further quite impossible to distinguish Thalamifl. & Calycifl. — one half the orders that go into Thalamif. are calycifloral — & I am sure Leguminosae &c are not Calicifloral in any sense more than Malvaceae & many others now put into Thalamifl. 8 Further you may establish a rude parallelism between the 4 groups, which is a convenience. Then too there are very many other practical points that are lost sight of in dealing with local Floras however large but which are fearful to encounter when dealing with the whole Veg. Kindom.
My Father is very poorly as usual in spring with his troublesome skin affliction.9 Bentham is well — we are desperately busy with Genera Plantarum.10 the labor is terrific.
Ever my dear Mueller
most sincerely yr
Jos D Hooker
Achlamydeae
Calyciflorae
Casrolliflorae
Leguminosae
Malvaceae
Monochlamideae
Thalamiflorae
Please cite as “FVM-62-04-11,” 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 29 October 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/62-04-11