To Asa Gray   25 April 1865

Melbourne. bot. Garden, 25/4/65

 

I have no doubt, dear Prof Gray, that you deem me most ungrateful & most forgetful of my obligations, because I have been so long silent towards you & not even forwarded any collections. I can little say to vindicate myself beyond that I have been kept excessively busy in my large department by extra duties of varied kinds & since Christmas last in endeavouring to aid the Ladies in sending out their search or relief Expedition1 after poor Leichhardt. So it has been only lately, that I forwarded through a former employée2 of this garden to you a parcel with about 500 dry plants, merely to show my good will. I see however the prospects of spending this winter a good deal of my time in my Museum & of distributing duplicates from thence; also I have to send you some of my recent publications. The 5 vol. of the Fragmenta is commenced3 & I am about shipping the Compositae for Bentham's 4th volume.4 Your horrid war5 discourages to some extent intercourse of all kind, but I will send my collections via London for safety's sake. I have now planted in one of the reserves of the botanic Garden an oakforest of about one thousand trees, and several hundred of these were raised from the acorns you so generously sent. Of pines I have planted in an other adjoining reserve 12.000 many Californian, but unfortunately none of the eastern States of N. Amer.

Mr. Osborne6 has written to me & expressed how kindly you received him. It is a very superior & thoroughly honest man, for whose future I entertain much solicitude. I fear, I shall not be able to write to him by this mail, but intend to do so by the next.7

N. E. Australia, especially the virgin forests about Rockingham Bay promise to yield yet many additions to the Australian flora. I have from thence Musa, Elaeagnus, Freycenetia,8 Hugonia, Ligustrum, Caelospermum, Timonius, Drymispermum,9 Argophyllum, Goniostoma,10 Tetracera, Atrophyum,11 Gouania &c &c besides many well marked new Genera. Prof. Brewer has done wonders in the Sierra Nevada.12

Your most attached

Ferd Mueller

 

Argophyllum

Atrophyum

Caelospermum

Drymispermum

Elaeagnus

Freycenetia

Goniostoma

Gouania

Hugonia

Ligustrum

Musa

Tetracera

Timonius

1
Ladies' Leichhardt Search Expedition, 1865-6.
2
Not identified.
3
B65.04.01, the first fascicle of vol. 5, had just been published.
4
i.e. the 4th vol. of Flora australiensis .
5
U.S. Civil War, 1860-5.
6
J. W. Osborne?
7
Letter not found.
8
Freycinetia ?
9
Drimyspermum ?
10
Geniostoma ?
11
Antrophyum?
12
W. H. Brewer had been appointed professor of agriculture at Yale University’s Sheffield Scientific School in 1864 after several years in California where he traversed much of the State, including the Sierra Nevada mountain range, during field expeditions for the government’s geological survey. He spent the early months of 1865 at Harvard University with Gray, working up his Californian botanical collections for publication.

Please cite as “FVM-65-04-25,” 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 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/65-04-25