To George Bentham   5 December 1868

5/12/68.

I have to answer, dear Mr Bentham, to your kind letter of the 2 Oct — I am glad to perceive you are well and again busy. I am looking forward with pleasure to the continuance of your valuable transmissions. The new transits, which I made, will not come in the order, expressed in your last letter. But as they are now on the way already, there can be now no alteration made. It is best, I push off within the next weeks the rest of the Monochlamydeae. You can then arrange the sequence of these heterogenous orders as you please. — The consignment may appear formidable, but is not so in reality, because the Proteaceae are so bulky and at the same time so very easily examined. Hence you will not require to give very much time to at least the Proteaceae, especially after the amount of labor, I spent on them.¹ Though Meissner saw it fall to his enveyable share, to describe so many extraordinar & singularly beautiful plants of this family, he left the descriptions (often for want of material[)]² very defective.³ So I had often to describe first of all the flowers or the fruit. The annotations of the localities are also very scanty. One Hakea (H. Leucoptera) he has under four names & four diagnoses, and yet these four stand not at all near to each other!⁴ — He also separated Grevilleas on the character of pinnatisected or undivided leaves, which character is not always constant. I have myself as yet seen too little of the West Australian Proteaceae in the field, to be clear about their exact degree of variability, which seems to be considerable.

In the characteristics of the species of Banksia & Dryandra Meissner omitted the carpological characters, which are very important indeed, as regards the septum & the seeds. How the septum can be formed by the testa, I have been unable to see. I think Meissners Dryandreae can be brought down to nearly half the number, after thorough sifting, as he depended on so many fallacious characters. If the conical stigma is of sectional value in Grevillea, it ought to have that value also in Hakea. Grevillea heliosperm[a] is truly bivalved in its fruit, a character rare in Grevillea, but universal in Hakea. RBr & Meissner have in the section Cycloptera of Grevillea several species, of which the fruit is thinly coriaceous like in Lissostylis & Ptychocarpa. When the Proteaceae are worked up, then the last of the very large orders of Australian phanerogamae will have passed through your examination. It will then be interesting to see, in what proportion Leguminosae, Compositae, Myrtaceae & Proteaceae stand numerically to each other. Of course Leguminosae & Compositae, particularly the latter will receive far more access by new inland discoveries, than Proteaceae & Myrtaceae, because the plants of the two latter orders are in all instances woody & mostly showy, while the small Leguminosae & particulalry the minute annual Compositae may easily elude observations, especially in a dry season.

Pardon me if I mention, that as some specimens of my normal collection are kept at Kew, it would do my department some good, if in our kind friend Dr Hookers Directoral Report this acquisition of my plants counted as a donation.⁵

Always with very best regards

Ferd. von Mueller.⁶

The term follicle for the fruit (a single carpel) of Grevillea ought to be banished. Meissner calls the analogous fruit of Hakea a caps[u]le, which it not is in the strict term.

Follicle being a medical expression, we ought not to have as a term for an organ of a plant.

Alph D.C. objects to the adjective acuaria⁷ (in Casuarina) but yet that word occurs in classical works, though more particularly applied to vendors. We have so many half latin & half greek words, that really a fair one like acuaria might pass.

Banksia

Casuarina acuaria

Compositae

Dryandra

Dryandreae

Grevillea heliosperma

Hakea Leucoptera

Leguminosae

Lissostylis

Monochlamydeae

Myrtaceae

Proteaceae

Ptychocarpa