3/3/68
I intended to have written you a long letter, dear Mr M'Crae, in reply to your kind letter of the 25/11,1 but the accumulation of the mail work this time has been so colossal, that really I could not find finally any real leisure for communicating to all my friends at length. Your son Alexander I have seen since his return from the back-country of Queensland and your kind Lady will be so obliging as to put his most interesting observations on the distant country in such a form, as to admit of their being utilised for Geography. I have no note from Professor Balfour of Edinburgh lately, but feel greatly obliged for your kindly taking my little xerotes-basket to him.2 If our Melaleucas, Leptospermums Eucalypts and Acacias Casuarinas will stand the clime of the Shetland Islands, then nothing would grow more rapidly there. I should have thought tall Willows would succeed better. But let the Australian trees by all means be tried. I will send fresh seeds, just collected of about a dozen kinds of our hardiest trees to your Lady in order that they may be despatched at an early opportunity.
The best plan would be to have half of them sown in ploughed land after the cold weather; the other half better be sown in pots and kept under shelter to be transplanted in the year following to the spots of permanency. It would be well to shelter the young seedlings by putting dry grass and boughs as a protection laxely over them. On further reflection I think it best to send the seeds direct to Dr Hooker under your adress, as I have to send in a weeks time a case by the "Great Britain" to Kew & thus may save the good Mrs. M'Crae the inconvenience of a special sending.3
Thanking you, my dear and and4 excellent friend for all your kind wishes and for your friendly attachment I remain with regardful salutation
your
Ferd. von Mueller.
The seedlings in the ploughed land should of course not be transplanted but left to themselves.
Acacia
Casuarina
Eucalyptus
Leptospermum
Melaleuca
Please cite as “FVM-68-03-03c,” 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