To Thomas Anderson   22 November 1864

Melbourne bot Garden

22/11/64

Dear Professor

Yesterday arrived the case with the large collection of Indian plants you so kindly transmitted pr Marguerite, and which will be a real boon to me, called upon as I am so frequently to compare the plants of Northern Australia with India. I will strive to send you a good return of Australian plants, more particularly of the northern regions, as these will be of more immediate use to you for comparison. My collector1 is in an interesting district, in the jungle mountains of Rockingham Bay, but his supplies are not abundant, as the place is so dreadfully besieged by numerous hordes of the most savage natives, so that no one can go any distance without being armed to the teeth, a circumstance that materially interferes in getting together plants in some quantity.

I have sent by this months mail a case with 18 Araucaria Cookii to you, strange plants, two years in my nursery now since imported as seedlings from New Caledonia. I regard its soft foliage more beautiful even than that of Araucaria excelsa.

I was very sorry to hear of the sad devastation the shoking cyclone has caused in your paradisic garden,2 and can feel for you the more as I have suffered myself by 3 successive innundations of the lower parts of my garden during the last year, involving losses to the extent of several thousand pounds to my department.

By this mail I send you also two little books for your friendly acceptance. That of the Chatham Vegetation may ensure your interest more particularly as in it I have briefly but decidedly opposed the reckless transmutation theory.3

 

Araucaria Cookii

Araucaria excelsa

 
John Dallachy.
The Argus of 11 November 1864, p. 6 carried a report of the 'terrific cyclone' that passed over Calcutta on 5 October 1864. It noted that 'The botanical gardens were totally destroyed’.
B64.13.02; see Lucas (2010). No valediction; letter incomplete?

Please cite as “FVM-64-11-22,” 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 28 March 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/64-11-22