To George Bentham   14 July 1865

14/7/65

 

Your kind letter of 25/4 dear Mr Bentham, did not arrive in time to be answered by last months mail It is my intention to send you soon all the Compositae, a very extensive, beautiful & instructive collection. I will work on a few genera, e.g. Olearia before they are finally despatched. I had much to withdraw my attention from plants of late.1 Still I managed to render some novelties known from N. E. Australia. After all the influx of new plants is very sparing & I doubt, whether all Australia will yield more than 500 plant[s] additional to what we know already. You desire me to continue my work on Victorian plants. In truth I have no courage & spirit to do so, for the greatest part of interest is withdrawn from it by the appearance of the flor. Australiens. 2 I have lately devoted more time to my ordinary original profession & have felt so disheartened that once I was at the eve of giving up Botany althogether. Were I few years younger & had I not made such immense sacrifices for it, I certainly should turn my attention to something else. — Under any circumstance[s] I will assist & continue to assist in your work & should I be away at any time collections shall still be sent to you as before and the Gov. subsidy be continued 3

I send a few Myrtaceae by this mail, including 2 apparently well-marked Eucalypti, which I described for the 33 fasc of the Fragmenta. I send also the only specimen of a beautiful redflowered climber of a genus near Kennedya, which if new might be called Streptosia.

Perhaps you have still time to introduce it into the genera plantarum.4

Regardfully

your

Ferd Mueller5

Compositae

Eucalyptus

Kennedya

Myrtaceae

Olearia

Streptosia

 
1
M was acting for the Ladies' Leichhardt Committee in arranging the Leichhardt Search Expedition (see agreement between D. McIntrye and M, 20 July 1865); see also Brown-May and Maroske (1994) for a discussion of an engagement to Rebecca Nordt.
2

M had communicated similar unhappiness to his correspondents, who informed the Hookers. For Henry Barkly, see notes to M to J. Hooker, 24 October 1864 (in this edition as 64-10-25a). George Thwaites reported 'Mueller, from his letters to me, appears to be in a very unhappy state of mind. He seems to think he has lost importance and influence as a scientific man from having allowed another person to undertake the Australian Flora. If his name could appear with Bentham's on the title page, it might make poor Mueller satisfied. Do not take any notice of my having written this, when you are corresponding with Mueller, as he might be angry with me for interfering.' (G. Thwaites to J. Hooker, 28 March 1865, RBG Kew, Directors' correspondence, vol. 162, f 330.)

Thwaites had apparently not seen a copy of the first two published volumes of Bentham (1863-78). The title pages of all volumes had M's name as agreed with Bentham before work began; see G. Bentham to M, 15 October 1861 and M to G. Bentham, 24 December 1861.

3
The text on f. 169 ends here, at the bottom of the sheet. The remaining text is filed as f. 6 of RBG Kew, Kew correspondence, Australia, Mueller, 1858-70. It is placed here on the basis that Bentham annotated the fragment in a way consistent with the comments upon the proposed genus Streptosia in G. Bentham to M, 18 October 1865.
4
Bentham & Hooker (1862-83). Bentham was working on the Leguminoseae, to which Kennedya belongs, for Vol. 1, part 2, pp 434–600. That part was published on 19 October 1865 (Stearn 1956).
5
MS annotation by Bentham: 'Kennedya or Streptosia Hilleana = Strongylodon ruber'.

Please cite as “FVM-65-07-14,” 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 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/65-07-14