To Nevil Maskelyne   25 August 1864

Melbourne bot. Garden,

25/8/64

Private

My dear Professor.

By last mail you will have received already from the Government of this Colony the assurance, that the meteorite so justly claimed by you will be forwarded on receipt of the smaller one. I was not aware at the time, when this communication was made to the Home Government, that it was coupled with the request of the hitherto incurred transit expenses being refunded. Having spontaneously made the offer to defray these, this point would under no circumstances have been one of hinderance. As it is, perhaps it will be best, that the whole arrangement henceforth should be a strictly official one, since you were (and very properly too) obliged to seek the aid of the Home Government in this matter, which had Prof McCoy not broken his word would have been amicably & privately arranged. The Museum here stands under the Chief Secretary's political administration & as this Minister (Mr M'Culloch) declared in the House of Parliament¹ that this Colony has no claim on Bruce's meteorite and has decided finally on the transmission, I have no doubt, that the honorable Gentleman also will take the official steps to demand the release of this mineral and arrange as I recommended in my last report to Government for the safe shipment of the specimen to the Minister of the Colonies by one of the engeneer officers of this Government. Should my personal and private aid become any further necessary I assure you I shall regard it a point of honor to render it. You have, my very dear Sir, no reason to thank me for what little I have done on this occasion to promote the interest of an institution of which your nation may well be proud. Contrary I blame myself now, that I did not take possession of the specimen for you in spite of the moral claims on it by our Museum, and could I have foreseen such an extraordinary course of events as happened I should have done so. I must confess a little less generosity and a little more legal keenness would be a great improvement in my character. — I intended to have written at greater length; but have been harrassed by many additional duties of late, leaving me not many sparemoments at the departure of the mail.

But I cannot forego the pleasure of asking your permission to bestow your name on some noble plant worth to bear it; as neither yours nor that of the great Astronomer, of whom you doubtless descended, has hitherto been conferred on a genus either zoological or phytological.² May I ask of you to inform me of your relationship to that Great man, whom the Royal Society sent to St. Helena for the observation of the transit of Venus and with whose researches Astronomy, the sublimest of all Sciences, entered into a new era, and whose celebrated name has received an additional lustre by your great researches in another branch of science.³

Allow me also to offer for your friendly acceptance the small portrait herewith enclosed, & to solicit yours for the series of those of befriended great coëtans.

With cordial regards

your

Ferd. Mueller