To John Balfour   25 September 1863

Melbourne bot Garden,

25/9/63

Dear Professor Balfour.

I have to express to you my grateful acknowledgements for your kindness of sending me through Dr Madden your valuable "outlines of Botany" 1 which comprises a summary well arranged of our favorite science & must prove useful to students & teachers. I am also indebted to you for several other highly interesting publications & for the regular transmission of Edinburgh papers, keeping me thus posted up in the work of the bot Society. My friend Dr Wilkie, a native of Edinburgh, a member of the Upper House of the Legislature and one of our most esteemed physicians here gets the paper always from me.

I have enjoyed twice a conversation with Dr Madden, whose health has greatly improved by the sea voyage, and I should have seen him oftener but for my engagement to aid Mr Bentham, for whom I have just now completed transmitting the collections required for the second vol of the Australian flora.2 Is the Balfouria saligna RBr named after a relative or ancestor of yours?3 I can find plenty of specimens from Queensland.

Can I do anything for your Societies? or for your Garden? pray command my services always unhesitatingly.

With kindest regards

dear Prof Balfour

yours

Ferd. Mueller.

 

Balfouria saligna

 
1
Balfour (1854). Henry Madden arrived in Melbourne per Monarch, on 27 July 1863 (Argus, 28 July 1963, p. 4).
2
i.e. Bentham (1863-78), vol. 2.
3
Robert Brown named Balfouriato commemorate a founder of the Edinburgh Botanic Garden, Sir Andrew Balfour (1630-94). See Desmond (1977).

Please cite as “FVM-63-09-25a,” 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 26 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/63-09-25a