To Joseph Hooker   27 November 1867

27/11/67

 

Your Wardian case pr Damaskus,1 dear Dr Hooker, has just arrived. About half the plants are alive, the other may partly recover.2 Accept my thanks for the consignment. The dry-plants, forwarded by the same ship, have as yet not been landed. Are they from you?

Your regardful

Ferd. Mueller.

 

I am glad th[at] Mr Berkeley's talents are now engaged on Austral fungs.3

Ought not some notice appear on the second flowering of the Austr Terrestr Orchids? to bring these plants from other countries more generally into cultivation It seems a very grateful task.

The case with capsular Epacrideae &c sent by the "Lincolnshire" I trust you did safely receive.4 Prof Ballon did not get my letter in time,5 in which I asked him to send my Euphorbiaceae directly to Mr Bentham for the 4th vol.6 — So I have still to send them from here. They arrived here this very day!7 An extensive investigation of the percentage of Potash in the wood & also in the foliage of our trees is just drawing to a conclusion. The results are most satisfactory.8

We have now more than 150 species of Australian Euphorbiaceae. I like Baillons treatment of them well.9

 

Epacrideae

Euphorbiaceae

 
1
The clipper Damascus left Plymouth on 31 August 1867 and arrived in Melbourne on 17 November carrying, among other cargo, ‘I case, Dr Mueller’. The Captain reported a slow journey through the tropics and meeting unsteady westerly winds and variable weather while sailing east between latitudes 43 and 45 degrees South (Argus, 18 November1867, p. 4).
2
See J. Hooker to M, 15 August 1867.
3
Berkeley (1873).
4
Sent 5 October 1867 (RB MSS M44, notebook recording despatch of plants for Bentham for Flora australiensis, Library, RBG Melbourne).
5
Baillon? Letter not found.
6
See M to G. Bentham, 21August 1867.
7
Some Euphorbiaceae were sent to Kew on 18 May 1868 (RB MSS M44, notebook recording despatch of plants for Bentham for Flora australiensis, Library, RBG Melbourne). See also M to G. Bentham, 21 May 1868.
8
See B69.07.03, pp. 14-15.
9
Baillon (1866) described a number of species, including Euphorbia ferdinandi (p. 284), based upon the material from M's herbarium.

Please cite as “FVM-67-11-27a,” 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 29 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/67-11-27a