24/3/66.
I have been so harrassed, dear Mr Bentham, during this rainless season, that any close application to phytographic work was absolutely out of the question. Now since the summer passed I hope to be able to go carefully into Compositae & quite in time for you. I have several parcels in readiness for you, but not enough to make up a box.
Your investigations into the specific characters of the Eucalypti will render your work most famous. The Eucalypti are to us technologically so important & since their cultivation has been commenced at the Mediterranean, Natal, La Plata &c &c, the diagnoses you will give will be extensively consulted. Perhaps some day I will write2 an illustrated monography of the genus, if I can get monetary means for illustrations.
I hope you will be so friendly to send me a list of the Eucalypti, as named by you with vernacular appellations for my index of Australian trees to be published for the Exhibition here very soon.3 I have yet to send you a few supplemental Rubiaceae &c and will do so by next mail.
Ever your attached
Ferd Mueller
Compositae
Eucalyptus
Rubiaceae
MS annotation in ink by Bentham: 'Dysoxylum oppositifolium F Muell is not D. latifolium and I think not a Dysoxylum at all'.
Further annotation in pencil, possibly by Bentham: 'E. tubul[osus] = E. leptanth | Myrtus [one illegible word] no fl. or fr.' ['E.' is a contraction of Eugenia :; see G. Bentham to M, 18 June 1866.]
Please cite as “FVM-66-03-24c,” 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/66-03-24c