To William Hooker   22 October 1862

Melbourne botanic Garden

22/10/62

Dear & venerable Sir William.

The last mail brought me again some lines from you, which I always inexpressibly above all esteem, feeling proud that you always so kindly are thinking of me. The feeling of pleasure, which I experienced in learning from you directly was mingled with sorrow, when I observed that you again were ailing. But I sincerely trust that in carrying out your intention to seek invigoration from the bracing effect of the summer-season you will have fully regained your usual strength.

I was turning over in my library only yesterday the pages of your learned article on Nepaul mosses in the volume of the L.S. of 1808,1 and when I reflect that even then you had by your researches secured secured2 the admiration of your coetans of that time, and that you continued with unabated vigour your discoveries for nearly 60 years, I cannot but feel how unexampled & unequalled the brilliant course of your labours continues & has continued and how deeply we are indebted to your genius & incessant work and the long series of volumes we owe to you & which for ever will remain an ornament in bot. literature. But though you may justly desire to bring your great "species filicum" to a close, of which work I have to thank you most sincerely for the donation of the last fascicle again,3 I beg still to hope that you will not overtax your energies in the youthful ardor for science which you have retained, but that you will not deprive yourself of that serenity and tranquillity which should surround the evening of so unusually toilsome a life as yours has been.

That you may long enjoy that quiet satisfaction of looking back on your triumphs of past year in happiness & health is what will all your admirers I pray of providence be long destined for you.

I showed Sir Henry Barkly your letter & his Excellency regretted much with me that you were not well at the time of writing.

I am glad to learn that your grand palais of Australian & Cape plants is so far progressed4 & will not fail to contribute largely towards it. We have at least 60 species of Acaciae in this Garden under cultivation & of many of these of several Banksiae &c the seeds will soon have ripened again, so as to enable me to send you a new supply. A collector will also be sent out, & your establishment shall share in the yield. Most probably I shall be collecting myself this summer for a few weeks in the mountains, as I feel a relaxation of my office & literary work is needful, if I do not wish to see my health getting entirely undermined.

I am bringing the 3. vol. of the Fragmenta rapidly to a close & prepare also the material for the second volume of the fl. of Victoria5 & above all the plants for the Universal Flora of Bentham.

Ever with deep veneration & regards yours

Ferd Mueller.

 

I hear with much condolence of the loss of one your grandchildren.6

 

Acacia

Banksia

1
W. Hooker (1808).
2
word repeated.
3
W. Hooker (1846-64). Part 14 of this work was issued in August 1862.
4
Decimus Burton's Temperate House at Kew was commenced in 1859 and the central portion and the two adjacent octagons opened in May 1863; the south wing (1897) and north wing (1899) were added later. See Desmond (1995).
5
A second volume of letterpress of this work was never published; see Court, Cohen and Maslin (1994).
6
Anne, daughter of Hooker's daughter Maria and Walter McGilvray, died on 15 August 1862, aged 11 years.

Please cite as “FVM-62-10-22,” 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 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/62-10-22