Melbourne botan. Garden
23/5/62
Dear Mr Bentham.
I hoped to have sent to you by this mail the remittance of £100 in aid of the work on Australian plants. But the Parliament has not yet passed the votes for my department nor indeed of most of the others; a new civil service bill affecting the estimates has however gone through the lower house & thus it is likely, that the financial arrangements for the year will be completed in time for my transmitting the amount by next mail. In the 18. number (transmitted by this mail) of my Fragmenta you will see three new genera characterized, on which I would be glad to have your opinion.1 I altered the name of Leiosporum2 given before to Streptothamnus, after I have now received the flowers, which seem to point to Bixaceae, altho' the embryo is so small. Have you in your genera plantarum3 considered my seemingly portulaceous genus Gunnia with septical dehiscence? I described it in the report on Babbages plants.4
I hope to learn successively of the safe arrival of my normal plants. vize:
1 case pr Young Australia5 shipped 26 Dec. (bill of loading)
1 case pr Great Britain shipped 27 Jan (bill of loading)
1 case shipped pr Dover Castle 27 March care of Dr Thomson the surgeon of the ship (no bill of loading)
1 case pr. Orwell, shipped 24 April (bill of loading)
I shall have an other case in readiness in a few days.
I hope you will carefully bear in mind my total adversity of seeing any herbarium Synonyms whatsoever published!6 Pray do not quote any of mine, even out of my catalogues, unless such are fully established by Diagnosis. […]7
Do you not think that I am fairly entitled to the priority of Citrus Australasica, having independently described it first8
Bixaceae
Citrus Australasica
Gunnia
Leiosporum
Streptothamnus
In B62.05.01 M erected Coatesia (C. paniculata), p. 26; Osbornia (O. octodonta), p. 31 and Streptothamnus (S. moorei), p. 28.
Used as a deleted herbarium name, replaced by Lamprosporum on the sheet K 591210. M erected Streptothamnus (S. moorei) in B62.05.01, p. 28. See also M to G. Bentham, 26 August 1862, and notes thereto.
Bentham & Hooker (1862-83).
B59.04.02, p. 9 (Gunnia septifraga). See G. Bentham to M, 24 July 1862.
Young Australian.
See Lucas (1995) for a discussion of M's concerns.
The manuscript ends at the bottom of a page without valediction.
This sentence is written in the margin of the first page of the letter. M described Citrus australasica in B58.06.01, p. 26. See Bentham (1863-78), vol. 1, p. 371.
MS black-edged; M's sister Bertha died on 7 September 1861.
Please cite as “FVM-62-05-23,” 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