To Joseph Hooker   10 October 1869

10/10/69

 

Let me thank you, dear Dr Hooker, for sending me a copy of your valuable report.1 Your toil during the year must have been a great one with all your extrawork, and you will sympathize with me when I tell you how I am always harrassed with new work with inadequate means.

Thus I have just finished a flood-dam, which costs £800 - - and for which only £300 - - was allowed.2 This will safe my garden against future at least ordinary inundations.

I noticed an article by Mr Berkeley on root-blight in Australian Cereals.3 Pray tell the Rev gentleman that never any specimens of Adelaide[s] diseased cornplants were submitted for examination to me.

I notice that in the bot. Mag, you have reduced Drymispermum to Phaleria.4 So the Australian species, to which you do not refer, have to change their generic name also.

Could you in one of the next cases, which maybe returned to me, send me a piece of the green roof-glass, which according to your report saves the trouble of shading.

Have you a bit of seed of Matricaria chamomilla to spare? The plant is not yet introduced into Australia, strange to say.

I wonder what Mr Mitten will think of the new beautiful Spiridens5 from Lord Howe's Island.

I have learnt, acorns will well travel in dry moss! Please let us try it as an experiment. It would be interesting to try it for Caryas &c also and would not so heavy as dry sand.

Your regardful

Ferd von Mueller6

 

Mr Thozet is coming by the Summersetshire7 (Steamer). You will be pleased to make the acquaintance of this zealous cultivator and admirable and generous man. Probably you will introduce him at the L.S. I gave him a note to you.8

The Victoria regia flowers here for the 4th year. The building & tank for it together cost only £120 " – "-.

 

Carya

Drymispermum

Matricaria chamomilla

Phaleria

Spiridens

Victoria regia

 
1
Not identified.
2
See M to J. Grant, 8 March 1869 and M to J. MacPherson, 29 September 1869.
3
Not identified.
4
J. Hooker (1869a), citing nomenclatural priority. Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6, p. 38 maintained Phaleria.
5
Hampe (1874), p. 668 described Spiridens muelleri among a collection of mosses from Lord Howe Island .
6
Although the remainder of the letter is written on a new folio, 407, on a different type of paper, the reference to the letter of introductionfor Thozet and the fact that the Somersetshire cleared out of Melbourne on 5 October suggest that it is correctly placed.
7
Somersetshire.
8
M to J. Hooker, 5 October 1869.

Please cite as “FVM-69-10-10,” 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 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/69-10-10