From George Bentham   27 October 1870

25. WILTON PLACE. S.W.

Oct 27 /70

My dear Sir

I have several letters of yours to acknowledge and thank you for but on looking them over I do not see anything requiring any special answer. The various notes you send on reading over the sheets of my Flora1 as you receive them are all put together ready to consult and make use of if ever I live to draw up any supplement2 In the mean time I think that when next you send anything over it would be very satisfactory if you could send to Dr Hooker for the Kew Herbarium specimens of the new species you have published in the Fragmenta since the corresponding parts of the Flora as botanists naturally look to the types being at Kew wherever sufficient specimens have been gathered — as for instance of Dallachy's plants and as yet very few have been received and those only fragments which came by the mails.

As soon as I had sent the last MS of the 5th vol to the printers I left town and corrected the last sheets in the country the volume was published in August and I trust that the thirty copies sent as usual to your Government arrived safely. I returned all the corresponding specimens before I left town.

I returned to town and to work about a month since and am now at Compositae for Gen. Pl.3 — that is a very tough job and will take me the whole winter even if I have no return of sciatica of which I am happy to say I am at present free — As soon as this new part of Genera is ready for press I shall resume the Australian Flora which I hope may be about April next. This letter will reach you I presume about Christmas and any supplemental specimens of the Monochlamydeous Orders not yet done which you may send off in February will reach me quite time enough.

It is very lucky that your Artocarpeae had not been sent over to M. Bureau.4 In the present horrible state of affairs in France it is impossible to say what fate might not have awaited them. It makes one shudder to think of the total disorganisation moral social and political which has so suddenly overwhelmed that fine country5

Trusting that you are in every way going on satisfactorily believe me

Ever yours sincerely

George Bentham

 

Dr F Mueller

 

Artocarpeae

Compositae

1
Bentham (1863-78).
2
Not all such commentaries can be found but see, for example, M to G. Bentham, October 1868 (in this edition as 68-10-00a) and September 1870 (in this edition as 70-09-00).
3
Genera plantarum, i.e. Bentham & Hooker (1862-83).
4
See M to G. Bentham, 14 June 1868, for the suggestion that the Ficus species (a genus within this tribe) be sent to Bureau to save Bentham labour when working up the Urticaceae.
5
As a result of the Franco-Prussian war July 1870–May 1871.

Please cite as “FVM-70-10-27,” 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 8 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/70-10-27