From George Bentham to Ferdinand von Mueller 23 Feb 1868
25 Wilton Place
London S.W
Feby 23 1868
My dear Sir
I received the day before yesterday yours of the 21 Decr You say nothing about your health so that I hope you are deriving permanent benefit from your trip to King George's Sound.1 I have much to thank you for the trouble you have taken about getting the £100 for the 4th vol. sent.2 I duly received it on Thursday last.
With regard to the commencing printing I had wished to do so immediately after finishing Epacrideae in the hopes of getting the volume through the press before I leave town in summer and I have now so nearly finished that Order that I should have begun in a week or ten days but as you wish me to await the arrival of the box per Superb which you tell me is already despatched I shall do so. I have also to wait for Sonder's Epacrideae which ought to have been here before now and which I am daily expecting, for there are a few of his which I am in doubt about.3 I hope the remainder of your Monopetalae are by this time on their way that there may be no ultimate delay in finishing the volume. The Monochlamydeae must as you say be reserved for the 5th vol. which I hope I may live to work out. Now that I have got into the Orders contained in Brown's Prodromus4 I see still greater urgency in going through the identification which present circumstances favour, and which I consider the important part of my work. With regard to the descriptions and arrangement, although it is that which takes up my time, I know well that with the advantages you possess you will be able to do it much more satisfactorily in such works as your Victorian plants but the identification of old species can only be done here. Brown's have been very much mistaken — partly from not having the plants he described and attributing his diagnoses to those which came nearest — partly from the insufficiency of short diagnoses when new species came to be compared — in a few instances (in two at least) from misprints in Nees's edition of the Prodromus (M) for (T)5 or vice versâ. Of the genus Leucopogon there are at least 4 very distinct ones which I find in no collection but Brown's L. alternifolius from West Cape Howe near KGS,6 L. deformis and L. appressus from Port Jackson and L. flexifolius from Queensland besides two doubtful ones of the leptospermoides set Epacris sparsa from Grose river7 is also very unlike any other Epacris that I have seen
I believe I have regularly announced the arrival of every box as I received them. None have failed and there is now only the one by the Superb still to come. I trust I shall hear of the safe arrival of the box I returned which was sent by the Wave of Life containing Stylidieae Goodenovieae etc. I shall return the Epacrideae as soon as I shall have gone through the supplements to come by the Superb. I have done all except Sprengelia Dracophyllum and the small genera allied to them. I shall have about 250 Epacrideae of which 116 Leucopogons They have given me a great deal of trouble owing to the minuteness of the ovaries which I have had to examine in so many specimens of each species.
The proof of XLIII of your Fragmenta8 and your specimens of Monotoca tamariscina and Sprengelia patricia came yesterday I immediately examined the former which is an interesting novelty (Some specimens of Drummonds without flower may be the same) and must I suppose be referred as you have done to Monotoca although in about a dozen flowers I opened I invariably found9 two cells and ovules. But the corolla and other characters are those of Monotoca. [The] character of the solitary ovule is otherwise not absolute for in Leucopogon pleurandroides I always found only one ovule although from the corolla etc it must be retained in Leucopogon. A certain degree of unisexuality occurs in many Epacrideae and even in this Monotoca tamariscina, in some of the flowers examined the anthers were small and semi-abortive, whilst in others they were larger and more perfect.
You do not appear to be aware of Stschegleev's description of a number of Drummonds Epacrideae in the Moscow Bulletin of 1859.10 It is excessively difficult to hunt up the litterature of modern systematic botany and I much fear that I may have passed over a number of published species.
Ever my dear Sir
Yours most sincerely
George Bentham
Dr F. Mueller
Dracophyllum
Epacrideae
Epacris spuria
Goodenovieae
Leucopogon alternifolius
Leucopogon appressus
Leucopogon deformis
Leucopogon flexifolius
Leucopogon leptospermoides
Leucopogon pleurandroides
Monochlamydeae
Monopetalae
Monotoca tamariscina
Sprengelia patricia
Stylidieae
King George Sound, WA.
The payment due to Bentham from the Victorian Government for each volume of the Flora australiensis.
Sonder apologized to Bentham for the late sending of the specimens, which 'were in the wrong place'; 'the contributions of Dr. Mueller are not present. Because you will get these direct from Dr Mueller you will be finished without those on my part' (W. Sonder to G. Bentham, 7 March 1868; RBG Kew, GEB1/9 George Bentham Papers, Correspondence, vol. 9, Sabine-Sykes).
R. Brown (1810).
That is, R. Brown (1825-34), vol. 3. The location indicators are given on pp. xii-xiii; cf. pp. vi-vii in the original edition.
King George Sound, WA.
NSW.
B67.12.01.
68-02-23_image01.jpg.
Stschegleev (1859).
Please cite as “FVM-68-02-23,” 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