Melbourne bot Garden
25/12/66
Sir George
Aware of your Excellencys vivid interest in all that concerns the development of prosperity & industry in your fair isles, I anticipate you will be pleased to see the enclosed small sample1 of paper prepared in my phyto-chemical Laboratory from the fibre of Phormium tenax — Neither glue2 nor bleaching substances have been applied to it, and in as much as I have no proper apparatus for pressure nor have the means of working with larger quantities of material, the paper thus produced is far inferior in quality to that really obtainable from this source.
In fact good writing paper may be produced from Phormium & this will probably be the purpose for which the plant will be turned really to commercial account.
In the intercolonial Exhibition3 I have now about 30 different kinds of paper from [bark]s, foliage, grasses, sedges &c & all these are in vast abundance available. The paper made of the bark of the Stringybark-Eucalypt seems to be the most important.
Let me remain, dear Sir George,
your very regardful
Ferd. Mueller
The percentage of tar &c I obtained from 10 kinds of our common trees is also quite encouraging for new industries. I am now engaged in causing the tannic acid to be determined in a lot of barks; & the 30 essential oils I exhibited in 1862 have let4 to a large export trade, the hypogaeous5 Kauri resin dissolving in Eucalyptus oil with facility & it being useful for very many other purposes & on a large scale most cheaply obtainable.
I am just concluding the 5. vol of my fragmenta,6 & in England at Christmas the 3 vol of the flora Austr.7 will have appeared.
His Excellency Sir Geo. Grey, K.C.B., D.C.L., F.R.S.
Governor of New Zealand
Phormium tenax
Please cite as “FVM-66-12-25a,” 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 26 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/66-12-25a