To James McCulloch¹    19 September 1865

Melbourne botanic Garden

19/9/65.

Honorable and dear Sir,

The friendly interest, which you were pleased to evince on many occasions in myself and toward my establishment induces me to think, that I may venture to adress you by these privat lines, especially as I do not wish to invade your privat home or to consume by a lengthened conversation that small share of time of rest and recreation left to you after your attendance to your high official engagements.

In first instance I wish to ask, whether you would kindly concede to me the privilege, sanctioned by your predecessor, to visit Europe on ful payment of Salary. The request may appear at first sight scarcely modest. But when it is remembered, that I solely cherished since years the desire to spend a while in Europe for the purpose of extending my knowledge and for no desire of pleasure or personal benefits I may hope you will not regard my request unreasonable, particularly since the additional knowledge gained will be turned to advantage of my department and I trust to the benefit of the colony at large, Victoria being regarded by me as my permanent home. To maintain the dignity of the office abroad & to facilitate my studies my ocular observations & my enquiries I shall be under considerable expenditure; and to travel on half salary would in an instance like mine altogether be out of the question, the voyage from here to Triest with a view of seeing even cursorily the Orient would cost £200. The former ministry regarded when I asked for leave of absense my services merely transferred from hence to Europe and unanimously granted my request. Your honorable colleague, Mr Verdon, the only one with whom I have lately consulted on the subject, is willing to support my application & generously consented to extend after a year's lapse the leave of absense for an other year, should I need it, in as much as I should have to enjoy otherwise scarcely more than 6 months for real work at home. I should not have asked for full payment during the period could I not enter into arrangements during my absense for the temporary administration of the establishment without additional expenditure to the department, or if my salary (£600) was such that I could afford to travel for a lesser amount, or if I had succeeded to save out of my income anything at any time. Indeed had your Government not purchased my library, almost my only possession, at about half its value, I could even now not hope to carry my long cherished desire into effect. I am now 18 years in Australia without ever doing any good for my future. The outlays of a man of science here and abroad are absolutely ruinous, if it is a point to carry on independent research, to support the dignity of the establishment as its head and to respond to all the calls for charities and other purposes made on a citizen in a prominent position. My income was always largely reduced by the necessity of providing my own library, an obligation not equitable when it is remembered that Prof M'Coy enjoys and deservedly so a salary of £1300 per annum and splendid house accommodation without being called on to provide any books, which all are found by the University. Should you kindly grant my request, I will prepare to leave by the January or February mail, so as to arrive after the northern winter has passed, my tendency to pulmonary disease, of which both my parents died during my early boyhood, having driven me in my youth from home to seek a genial clime. If I visit Europe I intend doing so singly, in order that I may quietly devote my undivided attention solely to subjects of science, even were my means admitting to travel accompanied by the Lady ² who is to grace my home, and who is willing to make the sacrifice to stay with my relations while I pursue my scientific plans.

The next point for which I would solicit your favorable consideration is the appointment of Mr E. B. Heyne as a permanent assistant in the horticultural branch of the department, as suggested in my estimates for 1866. This appointment will involve no additional monetary outlay to the Government, in as much as I propose that his salary should be deducted from the wages vote and the latter accordingly so much lessened. Mr Heyne has been assisting me since 1857 in the Garden Department, while Mr Wilhelmi is the Assistant at the Museum of the establishment. The one Gentleman is attached to my office as Botanist to the Government, the other³ would be formally then (as informally hitherto) be Assistant to me in my capacity of Director of the botanic Garden. My two appointments & their functions are quite distinct. As Gov. Botanist I was gazetted in January 1853, as Director of the botanic Garden in the end of 1857; for holding the latter additional office I may mention I never enjoyed any salary whatever. No Assistant could in both branches of the Department, (both very large, and circumscribed in their functions) do simultaneously any justice.⁴ I should have endeavoured to place Mr Heyne on the Civil Service list at the time when the new bill came into force, had not the desire of the Government at the time even been manifest to reduce still further the votes of the Department, though this desire arose out of no personal wishes of ministers, but merely on public grounds of economy, I neither had the courage to ask for Mr Heynes special appointment, nor to ask for any increase to my own salary, to which I believed myself equitably entitled. My health at the time was also so fluctuating, that I did not anticipate to live for any lengthened period & hence disdained to seek personal advantages having to provide at the time merely for myself

But here, I may be permitted to state, that should I be carried off suddenly by death, that no one but Mr Heyne is initiated in the details of the Directorship of the garden and that no one but he can bring the needful knowledge to bear on its proper administration, Mr Wilhelmi being solely trained while here for the museum work. The honorable the Attorney-General is of opinion, that the mere placing of a new office on the estimates will create a vacancy and that according to the terms of the civil service act then the officer named by me could receive, if it pleased you, the position. Mr Heyne would give all his time (evenings and part of Sundays included) up for the benefit of the Department. Mr Verdon is favorably inclined or at least not opposed to the arrangement, which injures no one and would be an act of justice towards the most talented & faithful Gentleman I have in the Department.

Next I would solicit while expressing my cordial thanks for your goodness of having passed the requisitions for the extension of the water supply, that you would also be so friendly to allow a few improvements to be made in the very humble private part of my office building, the whole improvements not exceeding £60 (sixty pounds) Requisitions are given to Mr Undersecretary Moore.⁵ The walls are whitewashed only, the servants room is unfit for a female attendant, the whole arrangements in the house which indeed never yet has been used except for office work, are of the crudest description. I cannot well, my dear Sir, afford to carry out these improvements on private expense, my studies, my travels, my library and my collections have absorbed since my boyhood my private means almost entirely and the collections have by donation become a property of the Department. I may mention also, that during my two years service in the North Australian expedition I received no payments whatever, altho' I entered the expedition almost as a volunteer in the meanwhile. Though half payment was promised after my return by Capt. Clarke.⁶ I have furthermore spent more than a thousand pound (irrespective of what the library cost) in the department successively in payments, which with every propriety could have been charged to the treasury of the state. I trust, honored and dear Sir, that you will pardon my having spoken to you with freedom. I feel convinced that you will regard the exertions of a man of science, whose sacrifices in toil and expenditure to gain his knowledge, to maintain his position & to advance his science worthy of more than ordinary sympathy. Mr Haines assured me, that he would always meet me in the same generous spirit, in which I had acted towards the Department entrusted to my care, and Mr Verdon honors me [with]⁷ similar sentiments of kindness.

To uphold a position of science such as I have here created, and which is unique in the southern hemisphere will always involve enormous sacrifices to the occupant of the office, but the sacrifices should not be such, I feel sure you will concede, as to debar him from creating a domestic home or to abandon every plan for the advancement of his knowledge away from ordinary departmental work or to leave him for his future by constant ruinous outlays from a scanty income inprovided

With grateful remembrance of many acts of your kindness, I remain, dear Mr M'Culloch, your obedient

Ferd. Mueller⁸