To Joseph Hooker1    6 November 1869

6/11/69

 

I feel very grateful to you, dear Dr Hooker, for your attentive kindness in causing the Bambusaceae and Bromeliaceae to be forwarded by the Essex.2 They will be a great boon. It is all the more kind of you, as you had to send them amidst all your unusual turmoil of rebuilding.

I can send one or two more Todeas, if needed. In fairness I can claim the merit (such as it may be) of having moved first of all these monsters, altho' this might have been done from South Africa 300 years ago.

Gradually an other case with museum-plants is filling for Mr Bentham (Supplemental Monochlamydeae)

It must be a great enjoyment to be in daily direct conversation with that man of real genius, Asa Gray. Pray give him my kind regards.3

Pray, have you plants of Erythroxylon Coca to spare? I had seeds from Peru, but they failed to germinate.

There has been a desire to withdraw from me the Directorship of the bot. garden, which I hold as an honorary office. Such a measure would however be humiliating to me after 13 years service, during which I mainly formed the garden &c. This measure besides would have divided authority and impaired my work, & I have thus been forced to resist this intended innovation, and as far as I can see it will not be done.

Pray let me send my best salutation to the good & venerable Bentham. I am sadly suffering from Laryngitis; this and the distractions, which defending my directorate from encroachment, must plead my excuse for the hurried & confused lines I adress just to you.

Always your

Ferd von Mueller

Bambusaceae

Bromeliaceae

Erythroxylon Coca

Monochlamydeae

Todea

1
MS annotation by Hooker: 'Ansd March 2[9]'. See J. Hooker to M, 28 March 1870 (in this edition as 70-03-28b).
2
See J. Hooker to M, 9 July 1869. Essex left London on 23 August and arrived in Melbourne on 10 November 1869 with '4 cases of plants, Dr. Ferdinand von Mueller' ( Argus , 11 November 1869, p. 4).
3
Asa Gray and his wife based themselves in a house near Kew during their European and Egyptian trip of 1868-9 (Dupree [1859], pp. 337-41).

Please cite as “FVM-69-11-06a,” 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 26 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/69-11-06a