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.2 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.3
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 plants4 and also vol. IV fragmenta,5 perhaps neither the little books on the mosses and Chatham plants.6 — It will need merely a few lines to the Chief Secretary & they will be supplied. Bentham goes rapidly on with the Australian General flora.7 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?8
Regardfully yr
Ferd Mueller
I have some very curious plants from Rockingham's Bay introduced into the 5th vol. of the fragmenta.9
Compositae
Myrtaceae
Letter not found.
The fate of the animals is not known. There is no record of them having reached Paris alive (donation lists, Bulletin de la Société impériale zoologique d'acclimatation, series 2, vol. 2 (1865), pp. 751-3, or series 2, vol. 3 (1866), pp. 699-701). If they had died before the Yorkshire sailed on 15 November 1865 (Argus, 16 November, 1865, p. 4), specimens would probably have been deposited at the Museum in Melbourne or sent by M to one or more European museums (see Lucas (2013)), but the International Thylacine Specimen Database has no record of any of the four animals (Stephen Sleightolme, Project Director, e-mail, 28 March 2024). If they had died on board, the remains would probably have been disposed of at sea. They are not mentioned in Paddle (2000), Holmes & Linnard (2023) or Ashby (2022).
See Paddle (1996).
B65.02.06.
B65.02.09.
B64.10.03, B64.13.02.
Bentham (1863-78).
Dr James Grant. See M to R. Gunn, 20 May 1865.
Mostly collected by John Dallachy. The third fascicle of the volume, B65.07.03, was probably in press at the time of this letter.
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