22/6/62
My dear Dr Hooker.
I am glad to learn, that 2 of the boxes with plants for Benthams work safely arrived. Pray keep a sharp Look out for the Dover Castle by which without bill of loading I have sent under care of Dr Thomson, (the surgeon) the Violarinae & that noble set of Rutaceous plants, which our herbarium possesses. I was tempted to entrust it to the Doctor, altho' it is always perilous to trust to private channels of communication. I lost thus last year a box with seeds &c transmitted to Dr Sonder, which never arrived & cannot be found out in London. The Dover Castle must have, long before this letter can reach you, arrived, as she sailed end of March.
By the "Orwell" under bill of loading I forwarded an other box with sundry smaller orders of Thalamiflorae. The Orwell sailed end of April.
By the next clipper an other consignment will follow, and indeed the greater part of the Thalamiflorae is now put in order and would have been sent already, were my attention not so much engaged at this season in the distribution of plants to public institutions (to which we supplied some 40,000 within the last weeks) and by the manyfold new gardenwork.
I am anxious to learn, what proportion our collection bears to yours. Probably, I have not many species, which are entirely wanting at Kew, but I fancy my series is more complete in the states of the species & as regards information on their habitat[e]s.
I hope you rightly understood, what I mentioned before, that I shall be most happy to supply for Kew any of the duplicates of the collection transmitted, as long as it does not break the series of forms of any species.
I am awaiting Pamplins note by next mail, whether he recovered the debt of Dr Andersons brother (at Calcutta) from the father.1 It is £125 If not, I will at once remit the sum for Prof Henslow's books.2
I was much obliged to you, my dear Doctor Hooker, for your effigies.3 I have that of Miquel in a similar form & value it much4 and will send you mine in return some of these days.
Should any difficulty arise respecting the giving over of the veg. exhibition articles5 in their entirety to Kew, pray let me know in time, so that I can act here for your advantage.
Is Prof Owen likely to purchase Abels meteor? So as to obtain then the 4 times larger one from here in exchange for British Museum.6
The £100 will at last by this mail go to the Agent General.7
Ever your
Ferd Mueller
C. Moores timber specimen, N. 153, of the present London Exhibition8 is my Ailantus punctata, which with 2 other Ailanti I have described in the 19. no. of Fragmenta.9 Cookia Australis is also an Ailantus, altho dotted! Planchon regards it as a new genus of Rutaceae.10
Will you kindly let me know, whether the Royal Society of London issues any publication for which specially must be paid.
Ailantus punctata
Cookia Australis
Rutaceae
Thalamiflorae
Violarinae
Letter not found; but see M to W. Pamplin, 26 September 1862.
See M to J. Hooker, 24 January 1862 (in this edition as 62-01-24c), and J. Hooker to M, 11 April 1862.
The photograph of Joseph Hooker in M's surviving album at MEL is a later image, from 1869.
No photograph of Miquel has been identified at MEL, but see M to J. Haast, 29 July 1862 (in this edition as 62-07-29b) and notes thereto.
From the Victorian exhibits at the London International Exhibition of 1862.
See Lucas et al. (1994).
The Victorian Government's payment to George Bentham for volume 1 of Bentham (1863-78).
International Exhibition Commissioners (1861), p. 40; that is, the catalogue of the preliminary exhibition in Sydney issued by the NSW Comimssioners. The catalogue reference is to a specimen, 'NOTELIA sp.? Oleaceae. At Merrigang, an ugly small tree, with hard hearted wood, but greatly decayed inside', said to have been 'collected or presented' by 'Sir Wm. Macarthur'. It is further identified as having had a former number (when in the 1855 Paris exhibition) of 67. Bentham (1863-78), vol. 4, p. 299, unites Notelaea ovata and this ? species as N. longifolia, citing the Paris specimen numbers 45, 67, and 187 of McArthur, and no. 34 of Moore.
B62.07.01, pp. 42-3.
M described Cookia australis in B58.06.01, p. 25; no reference to Planchon’s opinion has been found, but J. Hooker erected the genus Pentaceras in Rutaceae, to which he referred M’s species, in Bentham & Hooker (1862-83), vol. 1 (1), p. 298.
MS black-edged.
Please cite as “FVM-62-06-22,” 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