To William Guilfoyle   18 March 1869

Melbourne bot Garden

18/3/671

 

The fruit, enclosed in your letter2 just received, dear Mr Guilfoyle, is that of the Arnetto-plant (Bixa Orellana). Soon after the discovery of America this shrub was transferred to India, and now it is under cultivation through many parts of the tropics. The pulp, surrounding the seeds, is the Arnetto, now so universally used as a dye.

It is very kind of your worthy father to spare me, as he intends, some of the treasures you brought with you from the S. Sea Islands. I will gladly send anything in exchange, that may be acceptable from here. New Guinea could only be examined by a bot. collector from a mission station at its shores. To obtain the mountain and especially the alpine plants, it would perhaps be possible to get the natives to bring them down to the mission station at so much the hundred different kinds. It would not be safe for a solitary traveller to go inland. I think if a young man with some little capital joined any future mission station there for a year he would sell his collections well, as he could supply all the large Governments in different countries with portions of his gain.

The flowers of the Bixa are highly ornamental. So it will be to your fathers place an acquisition. I cultivate it in my conservatory for several years, but it has not yet flowered.

It will afford me very much pleasure to propose you by next mail a Fellow of the Linnean Society, and I am certain that with your great ardour and facilities of research you will distinguish yourself as a Linnean Disciple.

With best thanks for your gratulation3 and compliments to your father

Ferd. von Mueller

 

Bixa Orellana

sic. The contents make it clear that this letter was actually written in 1869. Guilfoyle visited the South Sea islands, May-October 1868, and M proposed him for membership of the Linnean Society in 1869 (see M to R. Kippist, 18 March 1869).
Letter not found.
M's appointment as Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George was announced in Australian newspapers—for example, in Sydney morning herald , 26 February 1869, p. 9—before the official warrant, dated 24 April, was issued.

Please cite as “FVM-69-03-18a,” 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 28 March 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/69-03-18a