16/6/65
This day, dear Mr Gunn, I received your very kind letter of the 14th1 together with the 4 Thylacine in excellent health. It is indeed a precious gift and I trust to fulfil now the wish of the Parisian Savants, who were so eager to secure this rare creature for the jardin des plantes. I shall not fail to render known who is the real donor.
The weather is now too cold to send the animals around Cape Horn. I shall probably wait til spring when the Yorkshire goes & when I can place them together with the sheep on board under care of a very trustworthy man. As these animals most probably would breed in not too confined a state, the species, ere long perhaps extinct, might be kept up in menageries from your importation.2
Pray inform me, whether there is anything in my garden that I can send you? I am not certain that you have my last publication either, for instance lithograms of Victorian plants3 and also vol. IV fragmenta, perhaps neither the little books on the mosses and Chatham plants.4 — It will need merely a few lines to the Chief Secretary & they will be supplied. Bentham goes rapidly on with the Australian General flora. The Myrtaceae, the main occupants of the 3 vol. will soon be done and I prepare now my material for the use of the 4th vol., especially to be devoted to Compositae & to be elaborated in 1866. I should have done more, had not the anxieties for the Leichhardt search absorbed my spare time since the end of last year
Is your poor friend quite recovered from his accident?5
Regardfully yr
Ferd Mueller
I have some very curious plants from Rockingham's Bay introduced into the 5th vol. of the fragmenta.
Compositae
Myrtaceae
Please cite as “FVM-65-06-16,” 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 24 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/65-06-16