From George Bentham   19 April 1867

25, WILTON PLACE, S.W.

London

April 19 1867

My dear Sir

I have two or three communications to thank you for and have now to acknowledge the receipt of the bundles of Campanulaceae Lobeliaceae etc which safely reached Kew three or four days since. Since however the publication of my 3d volume¹ I have as yet done very little to the Australian Flora. The working up the Umbelliferae and Araliaceae for our Genera Plantarum² turned out a much more serious affair than I had anticipated — Except in a few such uniform genera as Eryngium I have had to analyse the fruits of every species that I could procure tolerably ripe — upwards of a thousand Umbelliferae and nearly 300 Araliaceae and often of many forms of each species before I could be satisfied of their characters or want of characters. The whole of the present part of our Genera except the Addenda is now in the printer's hands and mostly printed off so that I hope to make a good beginning of my 4th Australian volume before the usual summer recess. I shall probably leave town rather earlier than usual as we think of going to see the Paris Exhibition and thence making a tour on the Continent, but probably return earlier than usual, when if I retain my health I hope to follow up closely the Australian Flora to the exclusion of everything else. I trust therefore you will kindly send the rest of Monopetalae so as to be here by September. I shall probably work up the Orders now received before I go and it saves me a good deal of time if I have your collections to work upon at the same time as those at Kew instead of going over the same ground twice over.

I had much pleasure in making the acquaintance of Mr Moore³ of Sydney although I saw him but for a few moments when he called at Kew on his way to Paris. He told me that he could not conceive that the Eupatorium cannabinum from the Tweed river⁴ could be otherwise than truly indigenous — which however it is hard to believe, for the specimen in your collection — although with only the upper leaves shows a truly European form of the plant. Mr Moore admits however that near a cottage on the same Tweed river he was surprised to find a tree of Virgilia capensis certainly introduced.

The 4th and 5th vols of your Fragmenta have only come to us in the loose sheets sent to Sir W. Hooker as they came out and sometimes in proofs which appear to have been afterwards altered so that we have some difficulty in making them up complete. Sir W. Hooker's Herbarium and Library are now definitively made over to the National Establishment at Kew which is now by far the most extensive and in the most complete working order of any in Europe.

Yours very sincerely

George Bentham

Dr F. Mueller

Araliaceae

Araliaceae

Campanulaceae

Eryngium

Eupatorium cannabinum

Lobeliaceae

Monopetalae

Umbelliferae

Virgilia capensis