To Joseph Hooker¹    22 February 1867

22/2/67

It is quite right, dear Dr Hooker, that you should decline to send any fungi to Mr Smith, but I should have imagined he was a well established observer.² I have for a dozen of years sent all my fungi (though perhaps not very many) to your rev. & illustr. friend, but not one diagnosis of them is published nor can I trace any record of any species, sent by me, in any of Berkeley's publications. All the great Mycologist did was to name some, while it would have been to his experience so easy to give an enumeration & to define the few new species. He did me the honor of coupling in the names my name with his as authority though I only gave the generic name. When sending lately some very rare & remarkable fungi from the N.E. coast, I adressed them to Berkeley, under your care. Should the excellent man have advanced too far in age to continue promoting Mycology or should he be so overwhelmed with work as to be unable to attend to any of my sendings, pray send these fungi then to Dr Sonder, when you next convey Cape plants to that Gentleman.³ Later in life & under anticipated greater tranquility, when once the department shall here have been well consolidated, I trust to study the fungi on the spot, but this will probably not be in time for Bentham's work.⁴ Pray give me credit that I do not intentionally wish to hurt any ones feeling, & though I may be impulsive and perhaps even occasionally not guarded in my expressions, I have the manly straightforwardness of always without ceremony expressing my opinion, and errors in this direction are much more pardonable than those in an other. It seems two cases of live plants from you are in the Bay. This will be glorious, if they are safe. I will let you know ere the mail closes.

You say all the plants, of which I lately sent seeds, are at Kew!⁵ But really, dear & good Dr Hooker, how have I to know it in the absense of a catalogue of Kew & in the absense of any illustration of such plants in the Bot. Mag.? This brings me once more to the question, can or cannot a catalogue of all known plants be published, according to Steudel's method.⁶ Such a book might be made the basis of all Garden exchanges, as useless homonyms could be banished from it. Such a book would sell well & relieve us of the trouble of eternal renewal of our catalogues. Pritzel would be the best perhaps to do it. Could not a few influential Botanists ask him? The work might be published in parts, thus for annuals, for Orchids & other conservatory plants, for ferns, for hardy trees & shrubs &c.

Eucalyptus amygdalina has been measured in our ranges 480' high, thus higher than the Strassburg Münster and as high as the great pyramid!⁷

I have given a statistic of 950 Australian trees & tabulated them geographically for my rather hurriedly written report & essay for the Exhibition.⁸

Are no records of a reliable nature extant respecting the Wellingtonias hight? In "the treasures of Botany" the very fact of giving the mutilated stem at precisely 300' shows that the measurement has been made at random.⁹

I have now the Bombyx Cynthia & the Coccus Cacti in my Garden.¹⁰

Ever your regardful

Ferd Mueller

Eucalyptus amygdalina

Wellingtonia