To George Bentham¹    16 April 1863

Melbourne bot Garden

16/4/63.

My very dear Sir.

I gratefully acknowledge the receipt of the bill of loading of the two boxes shipped return by the "Roxb. Castl." They will probably soon arrive.

Your verifications of the dubious plants of French writers is highly interesting & important. Who could have imagined that D.C.² would take (even without flowers or fruit) a Beyera³ for a Hemistemma.⁴

I am looking forward with great pleasure to the proof of your work. Allow me in first instance to say, that I found it too difficult to get (in my large department) my arrangements completed, so as to allow me to proceed home by this months mail & hence I must defer the voyage for a season (or for an indefinite period) as I would arrive too late in the year at home did I go next month. The interests of my establishment are too large to be sacrificed & hence notwithstanding my fluctuating health, I must endeavour to struggle on. But I am obliged to take great care of myself, if I will not succumb. You will see this in the melancholic expression of the photograph which I enclose.⁵ Nevertheless I shall concentrate all my energies now on working with you. The 3 vol. of the Fragmenta is ready & will go to you probably by this mail. The Expedition plants are also examined, the annual report⁶ is written & winter work for the garden arranged. So I shall have time to go on with the Leguminosae, & if I find I am too slow I will send them off without examination. You must under any circumstance not be delayed in your glorious progress. Occasionally some novelties will come in, especially as we have a collector in N.E. Australia;⁷ there is also yet something in Oldfields Murchison River collections to be described, but as I reserved for myself the monopoly of those plants, I can afford letting them lay by for awhile. In a few weeks the new rooms in my house⁸ will be completed so that my library may be properly accessible, and I shall work then so much easier.

Mr Heward wrote that the collections of Cunningham, so considerately & so liberally given over to Kew,⁹ were contained in 200 boxes.¹⁰ If this excludes the Brazil. & N.Z. plants it will be enormous! and will entail a great amount of work on you to revise such a bulk, altho' again so valuable for the study of individual forms. Pray give me for curiositys sake an idea of what proportion my collections bear to the conjoined collections of Australian plants at Kew.

You express some slight displeasure of my having sent the notes on Gregorys¹¹ N.W. Austral plants to Prof. Balfour. For nothing in the world would I merit your censure, & you will find, when turning to the pages, pushed so rapidly through the press, that I did not merit it.¹² There is in the essay not a single diagnosis of Thalamiflorae, but very few in other divisions of the system of plants, and the critical notes are few & scarcely any p[e]rtaining of the orders promulgated in your first volume. I owed the bot. Soc of Edinburgh some material as an acknowledgement of honorary election¹³ & that was the only reason of sending the manuscript to Prof. Balfour, though his various kindful attentions entitle him to my gratitude. The few introductory remarks in the essay are, I think, altogether beyond the scope of your flora. Moreover you had everyone of the specimens on which my paper was based & hence it never occurred to me that any privation could arise to your work in my not placing the notes in your hands. You will see the whole is mainly ennumerative & written to fulfil a pledge given to Walcott. If I caused by my action any inconvenience it was truely unintentional.

I am just packing a case with filices for Sir Will. Hooker.¹⁴ They will go by the "Great Britain" and probably there will be sufficient space in the case to admit of introducing some fascicles for your second volume, which I presume, will be filled up with Leguminosae & Myrtaceae.¹⁵

I will not unnecessarily occupy your time with a long letter, therefore wishing you health & strength for the continuation of your inestimable labours & expressing my thanks for the large concession you have made for me in your work & of which I feel extremely proud I remain, dear Sir,

your attached

Ferd Mueller

I hope to send the 3 vol of the Fragmenta bound by this mail.

Pray give me the sequence of orders for vol. II if you do not wish to restrict it to Leguminosae & Myrtaceae.

The Fragmenta contain now after completion of vol. III diagnoses of 50 Genera & somewhat more than 1000 species.

Beyera

Hemistemma

Leguminosae

Myrtaceae

Thalamiflorae