9/1/65
Dear Sir.
In forwarding to you pr "Great Victorian" the additional material required for the third volume I have also transmitted Sesuvium, Trianthema, Gunnia & Aizoon, genera which are much better consociated with Mesembryanthemum than with Salsolaceae. Gunnia is described in the report on Babbages plant.2 Cucumis picrocarpa & C. jucunda are extremely different in the fruit; the descriptions of these plants in the phil Inst. transact.3 are drawn up from numerous specimens freshly collected in North Australia; but it is quite possible that in the herbarium the two species have been confused, it being impossible to preserve there the fruit properly. Zehneria & Muckia are wrongly united by Naudin; these two genera are well distinguished by their anthers; in Australia both are represented. You will find Zehneria Cunninghami4 described in Hookers journal for 1856.5 Disemma I reunite with Passiflora.6 The species need a careful scrutiny. The name humilifolia I have given to one might be changed to lupulifolia.7 I have not sent the only Symplocos known to me from Australia. But if you wish to have the genus in the third volume you will find a description of this plant in the Fragmenta.8 Of many of the northern plants, such as Pavetta, there is a more or less extensive account in my manuscripts preserved at Kew.9
R. Brown pointed cleverly out, why Euphorbiaceae cannot stand with Monochlamydeae.10 If you desire them for the 3th. volume which therewith could be rendered sufficiently voluminous for excluding all Compositae, you will be able to obtain my collection from Dr Baillon of Paris, who by the time you require it will have worked it up.
Asperula oligantha is mentioned by Miquel;11 I use the name as a collective one of all of Dr Hooker's Australian species, none of his appellations being legitimate for the one species as comprehended by me.
Nuytsia I reduce to Loranthus; the tripterous fruit occurs not in L. (Nuytsia) ligustrinus.
The Loranthi are to be reduced to few species, not more than I enumerated in the bot. account of Babbages exped12 But without my material any European Botanist would likely establish thrice as many species as I admit. On Araliaceae notes are scattered through the Fragmenta; on Rubiaceae likewise in the Victorian transactions (vide Canthium &c) I do not attach so much importance to the perfectness or otherwise of the septum of the fruit Rubiaceae, & scarcely like to separate Roodia from Gardenia.
After sending off the Trachymenes I observe that I have given a temporary name to Trachymene deflexa Turcz.
In looking over Turczaninows notes of 1863 I find that his Pronaya Muelleriana = Billardiera cymosa.13
The name Loranthus ligustrinus being preoccupied Nuytsia ligustrina might pass as Loranthus epigaeus.
Since writing the commencement of this letter I have been favored with yours of the 24 Nov.
Your remarks on the affinity of some of the Caesalpineae14 are very interesting.15 Before we know all the plants of the globe all arrangements of genera must remain very imperfect & arbitrary in many cases.
As it is now finally settled that all supplements have to be retained for a closing volume, I shall send no more supplemental plants. As regards your remark that every botanist has his own views on genera & species, I can only deplore that it should be so in regard to the latter, though it never will be otherwise as far as genera are concerned. In the demarcation of species the operator in the field should always enjoy predominant deference. That I do not agree from my experience, poor and worthless as it may be, to your thesis of biologic succession you will have noted in the few words I said on that subject in the preface to the little work on the Chatham Isl16 vegetation. A species is to me what never deviates from a grand structural type requiring special creation, and for that definition of species the most elevated of all, homo sapiens, is at once an excellent type. I see nothing in those lower animals, fit to develop themselves into different beings, [divers] forms (or races or varieties) of our species, certainly more wonderfully endowed by nature to form a complex of different organisations than usual. But is not the whole creation a wonder? & why should not some wonderful exceptions (hitherto [moreover] ill understood) exist from a general rule? We have no right on that ground to argue, that there must be a link of gradations incapable of specific intersection from man to the highest developed plants, and to nothing else than that assumtion are we logically le[t] by the transmutation theory, which for descriptive natural science can never do any good & must do a vast amount of harm in that & many other directions. We have, as you are but too well aware, to demonstrate in natural history from facts alone & not from theories according to the true Baconian axiom; and we do not find such transmutations if we once adopt a broad comprehensive view of the limits of species & their wide variation powers. Epilobium is an excellent example.17
Your views of genera, as artificial, I share fully That D.C.18 & others should in transferring species to other genera to which they have been drawn by others before always fall back upon that specific name first adopted by some author can not establish a law;19 one's own feelings must dictate what is right & wrong & mine teach me that such a proceeding is most inequitable.
With profound obedience
yr
Ferd Mueller.
The Compositae shall be sent in due time
It is likely that the estimates for my department will be passed within the next weeks, when I shall arrange about the draft of £100 for the 3 volume20
Please cite as “FVM-65-01-09,” 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 19 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/65-01-09