To William Brewer   22 August 1865

22/8/65

The most interesting letter, dear Prof. Brewer, written by you on the 17. Oct of last year1 remained so long unanswered, because I watched for a direct opportunity of sending something to your country. This has at last occurred, by the Patr. Henry, which will leave here about the middle of next month.2 I will send by her a box of specimens to the illustrious Asa Gray, and among these will be a sufficiency of duplicates to provide for your private collection. The most important notes of your letter I had published here,3 since they are of high interest to the general reader who intellectually follows the march of great discoveries. Your labours under the aid of Prof Gray will most gloriously widen our knowledge of the vegetation & other physical features of the high mountain regions of the west of North America, and this will be a labour of which future ages will envy you.4 Your field exertions have also a most important bearing on geographical & geological enquiry & will thus be pregnant with manyfold [deep] interest We have nothing of so grand a feature in Australia, than that region explored by you. There are only 2 points in all Australia rising to 7000’ feet, one of which (Mount Hotham) was first ascended, fixed & named by me.5 If you can spare a few of the duplicate plants of any of the Californian regions for my Museum, I should feel much indebted as I really have nothing from there. I have now about 350,000 plants in my herbarium, which I presented to the State, and which will be well preserved in all futurity, as it is unique in the S. hemisphere.

Allow me to mention, that I am eager to raise as many of the noble American pines as I can. We have absolutely no pines of importance in Australia, except within the eastern tropics Araucariae. So it becomes a great object to introduce the firs of America & India in masses into our vegetation & thus I endeavour raising them by the thousands for our public reserves.

I was delighted to insert your carte de visite into my gallery of celebrated friends & beg to offer you my humble effigies in return.

Ever regardfully

yr

Ferd. Mueller.

 

Certainly Bromus (Ceratochloa) unioloides ought to become the most important pasture grass of N. A.6

 
 

Araucaria

Bromus unioloides

Ceratochloa unioloides

1
Letter not found.
2
Patrick Henry cleared out of Port Phillip Bay, bound for New York, on 20 September 1865 ( Argus , 25 September 1865, p. 4).
3
‘California. The Results of the State Geological Survey’, Argus , 13 January 1865, p. 6?
4
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 during field expeditions for the government’s geological survey. He spent the early months of 1865 at Harvard University with Asa Gray, working up his Californian botanical collections for publication.
5
M’s name for the mountain he climbed was not adopted; it is now known as Mt Feathertop (see Home [2014]).
6
North America.

Please cite as “FVM-65-08-22,” 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 25 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/65-08-22