From Ferdinand von Mueller to Marcus Clarke   27 July 1870

Melbourne botanic Garden

27/7/70.

It has been very pleasing to me, dear Mr Clarke, to learn that the trustees of the Industrial Museum are approving of the progress of the work in the phytologic section.¹ In reference to the adoption of English appellations for the woodspecimens, I beg to remark, that in Australia alone over thousand kinds of trees exists, none of which is indigenous to England, and most of which are endemic Australians. Hence they do not possess English names, and even if the systematic Greek or Latin names were fused into English language, such translated names could not be forced into adoption, and any arbitrary choice or new invention of English names would still not render the trees generally recognized. Whereever it can be done I adopted English names along with the phytographic names on the labels. But it must not be forgotten, that in the vernacular appellations of the trees of this land the wildest and most perplexing confusion exists. Thus we have dozens of Boxtrees in Australia, different in different localities, or even the same tree passing under half a dozen designations of the Splitters in one and the same district. Being as an explorer, as an administrator of a department of the public service, as an author in the natural sciences for quarter of a century and — I may add — as an early and poor orphan — of very practical tendency, I am aiming to render all my work in life useful to those for whom it is intended, and shall not deviate from the principles, to which I am accustomed for almost fourty years, now late in life at any duties which in our industrial museum may devolve on me.

With my best salutation

Ferd. von Mueller.

M.D.

Marcus Clarke Esqr, &c &c &c

Secr. to the technol. Museum