To George Bentham   22 April 1870

22/4/70.

As far as sparehours occasionally permit, dear Mr Bentham, I work quietly away on Monocotyledoneae, preparatory for your work, but these sparehours are and have been much diminished in number through the ordeal, through which I am passing so cruelly and undeservedly in my department. Could I have foreseen recent treatments & the behaviour to me on a former occasion, I would and could never have thought of accepting such an appointment, but after 17 years work in the Department (and how have I worked!) and after spending all my private property in it, I cannot sever myelf from it without utter ruin. There is some hope, however, that I will come like a Phoenix out of the ashes.

Mr Moore has sent some more Lord Howes Island plants. Carmichaelia, Calophyllum & some others are interesting. There is also a new probably scrophularinous plant among them, which some early day I must examine. Zanthoxylon does not agree with Z. Blackburnia & I have named it as a new species & will introduce it into the new number of the fragmenta with a few other notes on Xanthoxyleae. In examining the Palms I have ventured to unite the Veitchias, of which one occurs in Howes Island with Kentia.¹ If it is to be kept apart, then also a new genus on one or two other of the Palms of that isle must be formed, to which the name Europhoenix² might be given. I communicated with Wendland on the subject.³ From the Liverpool River I have a new very tall Palm, a new Kentia.⁴

To the new pages of the Flora of Australia I look forward with the utmost interest. I would like to live to see the work finished, but, alas, that is very doubtful, especially if I am treated here with so little consideration. Not that there is a want of general appreciations of my labor, but a few dastardly individuals unscrupously try to mislead public opinion, and an officer like myself, under the Civil service regulations is prevented to defend himself! The reports of the Department are hardly ever read, not even in Europe. Hence in not a single public European journal seen by me is the slightest notice taken of my Departmental Document of 1869, except by Regel in Petersburg, as far as I have seen.⁵ Veitch, also when he was here, some years ago, did — perhaps unwittingly — by his journal remarks great injustice and damage to my establishment.⁶

However I will not further trouble you with these matters; but what little I said will show you, that under almost unparalleled struggles, it is not always in my power to do quite as much for you as I wished. The sorting and comparing of so many thousand specimens for each volume of the flora involves however far more work, than would readily be apparent from its pages.

Fifteen Monimieae in Australia!⁷ That is glorious.

Trusting you remain well & will take that utmost care of your health, which your age renders imperative I remain

your deeply regardful

Ferd von Mueller

Could Walter Hills new genus of Cycadeae, described in the Gardeners Chronicle⁸ and not mentioned by Miquel in the Prodromus of DC⁹ — be perhaps merely Cycas media, which, as pointed out in my report on the Burdekin plants, grows to very great hight¹⁰

Drimys Howeana may be Baillon's Drymis crassifolia.

There seems to be no reason whatever to reject my adjective "acuaria" for the new Casuarina.¹¹ I find it in my old latin Lexicon. Far less classic words are used even by Linné for plants: e.g. ranunculosis &c &c¹²

Calophyllum

Carmichaelia

Casuarina acuaria

Cycadeae

Cycas media

Drimys Howeana

Drymis crassifolia

Europhoenix

Kentia

Monimieae

Monocotyledoneae

Veitchias

Xanthoxyleae

Zanthoxylon Blackburnia