To Joseph Hooker¹    27 November 1866

27/11/66

My extraduties, dear Dr Hooker, connected with the Intercolonial Exhibition² have been for many weeks past so heavy, that I could find no leisure for anything, & hence I can now, at the eve of the mail departure, only thank you for your goodness in sending me the Orchids, which arrived well, but the Manihot had perished³ on the way. The Willows & Bramble will be most acceptable. They are such grateful plants.

What a pity, some one does not set to work to publish an index plantarum, to serve all gardens. We could then annually circulate such volume & mark off what at the time we have & what at the time we require. Could not some fifty gardens or Botanists unite to offer a prize of a few hundred pounds to stir on some well informed man to enter on the compilation? It is really much wanted! The Society of arts⁴ might offer a prize for metal labels with unobliterable writing.

You will see that I regard the little dwarf Mesembryanthemum as new (M. tegens)⁵ though near some South African species.

Xanthorrhoea & Kingia seem not at all to travel well, except X. minor. But I will send seeds.

Your regardful

Ferd. Mueller

I shall just be able to close the 5. vol of my Fragmenta at the end of the year.

Ought not a new edition of [Steudel]⁶ and more particularly of Lindleys Vegetable Kingdom⁷ to be brought out, and when are we, as I suggested to the Congress, to have a Flora Europea. I sent by last mail £15-6/-for the widow of poor Harvey, as this claim was made on me by the heirs of Mr Reeve.⁸

I send just samples of paper of Dichelachne crinita, Stipa semibarbata, several Eucalypti, Cyperus vaginatus &c to Sir Will Denison. My tars for the Exhibition have turned out well.

Dracaena Draco has germinated

My Cinchonae (about 1000) are growing famously.

Cinchona

Cyperus vaginatus

Dichelachne crinita

Dracaena Draco

Eucalyptus

Kingia

Mesembryanthemum tegens

Stipa semibarbata

Xanthorrhoea minor