From Joseph Hooker   11 July 1869

Kew July 11 /691

My dear Mueller

Many thanks for yours of 19/5/69 this moment received & for the promise of the King of Todeas2 — what a figure it will cut at Kew! I saw 2 superb ones at St Petersburgh.3

You shall have the spores of our Ferns, & a case of live ones, as soon as we get a foreman; our late excellent foreman of that department has just invalided. I fear however that you will not find the Ferns quite so easy to grow from spores & cultivate as you anticipate, from the great difficulty in such establishments as your's & our's of keeping up a surprisingly good atmosphere & shade.

We on the contrary find Epacris easy enough of culture if we could only get them but of the hundreds of Australian species of the Order, we have not a score!

We have now 3 species of Xanthorrhoea growing, pumila from you, 4 angulata 4 from the North & another sp. australis? from Schomburgk. The two latter about 4-5 ft high.

I fear that on this side the world we think the reverse of what you do, in reference to the debt between Kew & Melbourne.5 Your Ward's cases arrive in such woeful condition & our foremen complain that your seeds are duplicates year after year. — You send us a much better report of the condition in which our cases reach you, though it is now too long since we have sent you any.— We have a case of Bamboos now establishing for you.

I think you will find about the beginning of my taking charge that we kept you in our debt with boxes of Orchids, Bromeliacae, Cacti, seeds & Ward's cases of rare plants. — but that lately we have fallen off which is much due to the fact that for three years my own & the men's time has been taken up with the reorganization of the Gardens, reconstruction of Houses & heating apparatus, which has thrown us altogether out. At this moment we are constructing 220 ft of new Hot & Green houses & pulling down 4 or 5 very large old houses. You may guess in what confusion this throws us, & how the men's time is occupied.

I can quite understand your anxiety about the Cryptog: of Australia6 — & I am sure I will gladly help you, though of all the worries I know, this of Crypt. Bot. is the greatest. The Cryptogamists cannot or will not come to Kew to work, & yet without access to books & large Herbaria, they never can identify their species — Poor Berkeley's health is worse & worse, though he continues working at your Fungi.7 No two authors are agreed upon Hepaticae, fewer on Mosses, & as to Lichens the whole subject is in chaos as it appears to me.

Ever sincerely yrs

Jos D Hooker.

 

To get the Australian Cryptogs undertaken ever will require a lengthened correspondence, which I really cannot undertake — I am overwhelmed with Indian & Colonial correspondence & have no time for my own works — The first thing to be done is, to select workers, to give them an idea of how much they will have to do, how they are to do it, how long they are to be, & what pay they are to get. A condition with all must be, that they revise (at least) their matter at Kew. Then, when the mss is prepared, you will want a skilled Editor to see it all through the press — who will see that there is some uniformity in the matter, & especially in the form & style — I can give you no idea of the trouble I had with all my Crypt Floras, to get the matter of each author into shape.8 Each author had his own notion of what should form — a description — a diagnosis — a genus — a clavis, a species — a variety, — a tribe — an order — a family & so forth — so too with the matter & manner of the descriptions — of synonymy, of quotations, of giving Habitats &c &c &c. My correspondence with some of these collaborators fills volumes. Lastly each has his own terms to express one & the same structure & organ, & the confusion is hence terrific.

 

July 15 /69.

Dear Dr Mueller

Since writing enclosed I have the Herbm looked up for the Isoetes you ask for.9 Oliver finds that the species are represented by the merest scraps, & that they will not stand being divided even for you: who we should most of all wish to serve

 
 
 

Bromeliacae

Epacris

Isoetes

Todea

Xanthorrhoea australis

Xanthorrhoea pumila

Xanthorrhoea quadangulata

 
1
MS has embossed letterhead of the Royal Gardens Kew.
2
M to J. Hooker, 19 May 1869, in this edition as 69-05-19a.
3
Hooker had been to St Petersburg to attend the International Horticultural Exhibition, which opened on 16 May 1869. For Hooker’s account of the visit see J. Hooker to C. Darwin, 6 June 1869 (Burkhardt et al. [2009], pp. 259-62).
4
i.e. quadangulata.
5
See M to J. Hooker, 19 May 1869.
6
See M to G. Bentham, 17 April 1869.
7
There is a note by Berkeley on M. Berkeley to J. Hooker, 17 September 1869 (RBG Kew, Letters to J. D. Hooker, vol 2 (BAL – BIN)): ‘Müller shall be contented in his hearts desire before Jan 1 1870 If I am in the land of the living.’ It is not known to which letter from M to Hooker this is a response, but it must be a letter written before mid-July; however, no surviving letter is unambiguously relevant.
8
See, for example, Babington and Mitten (1860) and Berkeley (1860).
9
See M to J. Hooker, 19 May 1869. Hooker noted on this letter that he had answered it on 16 July 1869. It would appear that he wrote the bulk of the reply on 11 July and the final note (which is on a separate sheet) on 15 July, and posted the whole on 16 July.

Please cite as “FVM-69-07-11,” 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 24 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/69-07-11