To Joseph Hooker   20 December 1862

Melbourne bot Garden

20./12/62

 

Having, my dear Dr Hooker, written to your venerable father & to Mr Bentham by this mail,1 you will pardon me if I but briefly respond to your kind note of 20 Sept,2 especially as I am in the bustle of arrangements for a new dash into the alps. I am bent for the Barkly ranges (originally discovered & named by me)3 & in most parts not yet traversed by any human being.

I was highly gratified that you paid to my deserving friend Mr [J.] Walt. Osborne so much kind attention.4 To your exposition of the Welwitschia we are all looking forward with intense interest, the more so as no one can form a remote idea of this wonderful plant.5 Pray give Prof Harvey my kind regards. I see his brother in law from time to time6

Ever yours affectionately

Ferd Mueller

 

Mr Jul[.] Haast has sent me a host of dried plants from the Southern provinces of N.Z.; several of them are new, but as it would be encroaching on your own well cultivated field I do not intend to interfere with your elucidation of the same, for which you will have received simultaneously material. He is off again to Mount Cook.

Ever your

Ferd Mueller

 

Welwitschia

 
1
M to W. Hooker, 20 December 1862; the letter to Benthamis presumably M to G. Bentham, 24 December 1862 (in this edition as 61-12-24a).
2
J. Hooker to M, 20 September 1862.
3
M first explored the upper reaches of the Macalister River, Vic, in the summer of 1858-9 and named the Barkly Ranges; the name has not survived.
4
See M to J. Hooker, 24 April 1862.
5
See J. Hooker to M, 22 August and 20 September 1862.
6
J. J. Phelps.

Please cite as “FVM-62-12-20b,” 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 25 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/62-12-20b