From Ferdinand von Mueller to the Editor of the Age   9 Sep 1866

Sir, — Observing in a letter, on tea culture, promulgated by your paper, that allusion is made to my name, I deem it but right to reply to the discouraging remarks of your correspondent. While I fully concur with the views of Mons. Alphonse de Candalle,¹ expressed in his presidential address, at the recent congress in London; I totally disapprove of the conclusions which your correspondent draws from the professor's observations.² Had the gentleman who desires a climatic reason to discourage the culture of the tea shrub in this country, even only travelled a distance as far as Dandenong, he would have noticed at a glance that we possess all the natural elements for tea growth in this country required, as explained by the learned Geneva savant, with whom, I may say, I stand in direct friendly relation. Your correspondent is better informed than myself if he regards the country pledged to hundreds of pounds of expenditure for tea culture. The many thousands of tea plants raised in the Melbourne botanical garden, this country owes to the generous liberality of his Excellency Sir Hercules Robinson. Whatever the results hitherto attained, they have involved no expense; they enabled us, however, to demonstrate, since a series of years, to any visitor of this garden, that tea endures even the draughts and frosts of the metropolitan climate, and they afforded the opportunity of exhibiting a sample of Victorian tea at the London Exhibition of 1862.³ It is a very different question whether the culture of tea as yet will prove remunerative in this country; that some day it will be so admits not of the slightest doubt. But if it is considered how incumbent it becomes to provide for an increasing population, all available means of industry, we ought certainly to leave nothing undone, even now, tending to that end. Why could not a settler within our ranges, who obtains tar, acids or oils from our timber, see the youthful members of his family engaged in the manual labor of gathering leaves from a tea-field? Why could not the primitive process of heating and curling the tea leaves give way on larger plantations to the lucrative working of machinery, and perhaps steam power; and why should a plant like tea, of easy growth and ready yield, be excluded from Victorian cultivation, when the olive, the vine, and even the silk, and many kindred products, engage the attention of the thoughtful and unprejudiced among us?—

I am, Sir,

your obedient

FERD. MUELLER.

Melbourne Botanic Gardens, 9th September, 1866.