Queenscliff1 26/8/67
I write once more from the coast to you, dear Mr Bentham, to report progress. In the stillness of rural life, at this season when no bathers are here, I hope, while spending here a few weeks more, to recruit my strength & regain mental elasticity. I had to go back for 16 days to Melbourne for departmental work2 & this enabled me to send off simultaneously an other large consignment of well arranged Epacrideae by the "Great Britain" While here undisturbed, I mean to finish off my researches on this order, now pending for twenty years. By last mail I gave you some indication of the reconstruction of the genera I intend to adopt.3 I have to publish similar remarks as I offered on Rhamnaceae & have sent a rather extensive enumeration of the species to the printer for my fragmenta.4 The drupaceous genera I have nearly completed, altho I sent off by mistake all my specimens of Needhamia & Oligarrhena & some others. I find that I cannot, as I intended, maintain your genus Conostephium, after I saw the shortly bidentate anthers of Astroloma Baxteri (Stenanthera squamuligera). I am not quite certain whether Andersonia can be maintained but have all the species here for examination. I shall in all probability join them to Sprengelia. The placentation is not exactly to be relied on, at least in Sphenotoma. As for the aestivation it is a doubtful character, though Brachyloma, Sphenotoma &c are in this way curious. Epacris itself has exceptional species in this regard. Unfortunately I have sent off the main bulk of Epacris too early, but hope to solve all doubts with the little material left. It is not without trembling that I reflect on the possibility of accident when sending off anything to you without a rigorous preexamination! But what is to be done, when the worker is beset with troubles in the department, prostrated by illness and overtaxed with extrawork? Hitherto we have been lucky in not loosing any consignment, only one box full of specimens having severely suffered on the way back.5 But we can hardly expect a hundred large cases of plants to go to & fro without some final loss. All my observations on the Epacrideae will be published by the time, that the September mail leaves, as apparently I gain a little strength by my stay here. I hope your work will by my preliminary labor be greatly facilitated. I see no hope to keep up RBr small genera, but have fairly weighed all evidence & have no desire of altering names unnecessarily
I received within the last days Geococcus pusillus from the lower Darling (New South Wales). So probably this plant is a native of Vict. & S Austr. also. Cakile maritima is common here on the Cliff.
Your attached
Ferd Mueller
Cystanthe will have to be united with Richea.
Andersonia
Astroloma Baxteri
Brachyloma
Cakile maritima
Conostephium
Cystanthe
Epacrideae
Epacris
Geococcus pusillus
Needhamia
Oligarrhena
Rhamnaceae
Richea
Sphenotoma
Sprengelia
Stenanthera squamuligera
Vic.
M returned temporarily to Melbourne from Queenscliff, where he was recuperating from his illness, on 8 August (see M to J. Grant, 8 August 1867), and was still there when he wrote M to G. Bentham, 21 August 1867.
M to G. Bentham, 27 July 1867.
B67.09.01, pp. 29-76. An extensive treatment of Rhamnaceae was prepared and published (B62.09.01, pp. 62-86) before the specimens were sent to Kew on 16 September 1862 (RB MSS M44, M notebook recording despatch of plants for Bentham for Flora australiensis. Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne).
See the memorandum of C. Wilhelmi and T. Mueller to M, 24 August 1864 (in this edition as 64-08-24a); M to G. Bentham, 25 August 1864; and M to G. Bentham, 24 September 1864.
Please cite as “FVM-67-08-26,” 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