To Joseph Hooker   23 March 1863

Melbourne bot. Garden

23/3/63.

Dear Dr Hooker.

I have to send a brief reply to your last letter1 Your acknowledging the validity of Macropteranthes in Combretaceae is very pleasing to me. I send a new (i.e. third) species found during Stuarts last expedition. I named after Stuarts principal Officer, who seems to have gathered some of the plants of Stuarts expedition.2 — I feel much obliged for your generosity of continuing your contributions towards our herbarium. Thanks to your goodness and that [after] equally well-meaning friends we have now accumulated already a very valuable herbarium of extra-Australian plants, important for comparisons, especially when we are able to trust so implicitly on their correct naming, which we can in all that comes from Kew. — I trust that the woods are now all safely lodged at Kew and that the specimens were not curtailed.3

I shall be happy to leave drawing up the description of the new grass to Colonel Munro, who will have a ready opportunity of introducing it into one of your periodicals.4

Very regardfully

dear Dr Hooker,

yours ever

Ferd Mueller

 

Pray give my best thanks to your venerable father for having sent me the completing numbers of the 4. vol of his admirable Genera filicum.5 All ours shall go for inspection to Kew by next opportunity. Since you always show so much solicitious interest in what concerns me, it will be probably pleasing to you to hear, that the Emperor of France has condescended of conferring on me the Knighthood of the Legion of Honor.6

 
 

Combretaceae

Macropteranthes

1
J. Hooker to M, 24 December 1862.
2
M named Macropteranthes kekwickii in B63.04.01, p. 151, to honour W. D. Kekwick, second in command of John McDouall Stuart's expedition of 1861-2. He had been promoted second in command during an earlier expedition. See Threadgill (1922).
3
Specimens exhibited at the International Exhibition, London, 1862.
4
See postscript to J. Hooker to M, 24 December 1862.
5
W. Hooker (1842).
6
See Ordre Impérial de la Légion d’Honneur to M, 6 January 1863 (in this edition as 63-01-06a; E. Drouyn de Lhuys to M, 6 January 1863; and M to H. Barkly, 23 March 1863 (in this edition as 63-03-23d).

Please cite as “FVM-63-03-23a,” 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/63-03-23a