To Joseph Hooker   6 September 1870

Bot Garden, 6/9/70

 

I thank you much, dear Dr Hooker, for sending me your new report,1 which shows that your huge establishment is assuming still greater dimensions from year to year. The income of my whole department is now circumscribed to about £3000 with wages at least double as high as in great Britain; so you may see what a struggle against impossibilities it is. For your sympathies I also express my best thanks.

The difficulties in my Department arose from the invasion of an ordinary gardener on my position, whereby much disorganisation, circumlocution and losses are caused.2 Under these circumstances it would be well to adress all your letters to me with the Designation of Director, which appointment since 1857 I hold under the Governor in council. Usually you omitted the title in the addresses and until these complications arose in my department this omission was of no importance; but now it will be safer and better to designate all your letters on Departmental matters to me as Director.

I am glad you took particular notice of the heavy Todea in your report and trust you will figure it in the Bot. magazine to draw the attention of the horticultural world to such a monster.3 The appellation Royal ferns4 seems scarcely appropriate for such a big square unwieldy thing when Alsophila Australis at the Black Spur, within half a hundred miles from Melbourne, has been measured fully 80' high! Is that the greatest hight of ferntrees known. I see Alsophila excelsa recorded 60-80' by your lamented father.5

Always your

Ferd. von Mueller

 

For your excellent Students Book I thanked you by last mail.6 I shall use it with advantage. Your elaboration of the species of Nepenthes for D.C.7 will teach us whether the Australian species, N. Kennedyi (Fragm. V, 154) described by me without flowers & fruits 4 years ago8 is really peculiar to the Austr continent. Poor Kennedy first saw it in his doleful expedition 1848.9 Has Mr Th. Mueller (now in Dresden) repaid the sum, which you so kindly lent him. I have only had a letter from him after he arrived, more than a year ago.10

No Leschenaultias exist within a thousand miles of Melbourne and the really pretty species are only in W. Austr.11

 

Alsophila Australis

Alsophila excelsa

Leschenaultia

Nepenthes Kennedyi

Todea

 
1
Hooker (1870a).
2
Against M's wishes, in December 1869 the Government appointed William Ferguson to superintend the 'practical management' of the Botanic Gardens, simultaneously with his role as Inspector of State Forests; see Cohn & Maroske (1996). This is the first reference in a letter to Hooker to the details of M's difficulties. However, Hooker had been told of Ferguson's appointment much earlier; see G. Thwaites to J. Hooker, 4 March 1870 (in this edition as M70-03-04).
3
Hooker (1870a), p. 5. The Todea was illustrated in Botanical Magazine, vol. 98, 1872, t. 5954. In his accompanying comments Joseph Hooker stated that '... after seeing four [huge specimens] exhibited at the St Petersburg Horticultural Exhibition in 1869, I wrote to my friend the Baron, and begged him to procure for us the largest specimen he could, which with his wonted promptitude and liberality, he did at once, so that before the end of that same year, Kew was possessed of the finest specimen in Europe, transmitted moreover free of cost for transport or voyage.' See also J. Hooker to M, 10 September 1869.
4
In his notes on the illustration of the Todea, Hooker wrote ' ... Todea barbara, or as it is ... called [in the Great Temperate House at Kew] (from its affinity to our British Osmunda), the Australian Fern Royal'.
5
Hooker & Baker (1868), p. 40.
6
Hooker (1870), see M to J. Hooker, 10 August 1870.
7
Hooker (1873).
8
Described, as N. kennedyana,in B66.02.02, p. 154.
9
Beale (1977).
10
Theodore Mueller was an assistant in M’s botanical museum, see M’s reference of 4 May 1869.
11
No surviving letter from J. Hooker to M in 1870 mentions Leschenaultia.

Please cite as “FVM-70-09-06a,” 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/70-09-06a