Melbourne bot. Garden
25./3./63.
Dear Professor Gray.
It was quite touching to my mind to receive your last note,1 indicating the transmission of a new and highly valuable consignment of dry plants for our herbarium. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been a most gratifying gift, but it became one of inestimable value when it is considered, under what enormous difficulties and anxiety a man of science has now to pursue his path in your country.2 By acts like these you have shown yourself again as one of the worthiest sons of science. May peace soon be restored to your suffering country. With it science will regain doubly its charms!
At the eve of my departure to Europe, whence I go for one year, I hope to arrange for the transmission of an other consignment of plants to you. Should I in the manyfold engagements in my department be unable to send them, rest assured that after my return there will be immediately attended to, especially as the duplicates will be meanwhile sorted, & much in the interval will arrive from our collector3 in N. E. Australia.
You have also been so kind to send me some of your recent most valued & ingenious publications, for which I have likewise to tender my best thanks. Those for Dr. Hance have been forwarded by the mail. You are inclined to base the characters of Lyonsia & Parsonsia on the structure of the flower. Allow me to remark, that, as I have pointed out in my report on the Burdekin Expedition, carpological notes of, I think, considerable importance distinguish the two genera. Echites scabra has upon those to be removed from Lyonsia to Parsonsia.4 You had probably no fruit of these genera yet for comparison.
I am just finishing the 3. vol of the Fragmenta.5 — My flora of Victoria6 was sent to you under the care of a friend, Mr. Osborne,7 in April last. I hope you received it and that it met with your kind acceptance & lenient judgement.8
Ever in sincere attachment
yours Ferd. Mueller.
Echites scabra
Lyonsia
Parsonsia
Letter not found.
US Civil War, 1861-5.
Probably John Dallachy.
B60.13.12, p. 16. M did not make the recombination suggested here.
The last fascicle of vol. 3 was published in April 1863; the undated Additamenta and index followed.
B62.03.03.
Presumably John Walter Osborne, who emigrated from Victoria to the USA in 1862 (ADB).
Noticed in A. Gray (1864), p. 286.
Please cite as “FVM-63-03-25,” 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