From William Denison   19 November 1870

Observatory,

East Sheen.

19th Novr [1870].1

My dear Mueller

I have been roaming about the Country partly on business partly for pleasure, and only came home two days ago. your letter of July 132 followed me about but I had not time to look into the state of my collection,3 or my Funds till now — I have, I find, some 10 or 12000 Species, several of them, indeed most of them, named but not in any way arranged, and I am looking forward to the quiet of next year when I shall have finished my Rivers commission work,4 to methodize and arrange my collection — it would not therefore be worth my while to purchase a collection of which many if not most would be duplicates. I will however see whether there are not public institutions which might be willing to purchase the whole lot. the price I think low if there are several specimens of each species —

I have had a very pleasant trip through Scotland and the northern counties of England I however have been looking after men, while you are dealing with the vegetable kingdom. your types are less variable than mine for though man, physically, remains very much as he was in the time of our first Parents, mentally and morally he changes from century to century. it is curious, however, to see what a permanence of type there is among the people of the the same locality; in fact I am almost disposed to say that Race is indelible except by crossing the breed — Education has no action upon the habits of the people upon that which is handed down from the Parents; Government have no effect in altering their subjects — I have been studying man for the purpose of inducing the Government to take up Colonization as a policy, and by Colonization I mean the organization of bodies comprising all sections of the social body under a satisfactory form of municipal Government. I have been lecturing at Edinburgh on the subject and am going to give lectures in London. The fact is that we have too many people in England especially among the professional class consisting of Clergymen, Lawyers, medical men, men of Science officers of the Army & Navy, Clerks in Public office &c. — more in fact than we know what to do with — however I will send you out a copy of my lecture5 which will make my opinions & propositions clear to you.

believe me

Yours very truly

W Denison6

1
editorial addition.
2
Letter not found. See M to F. von Krauss, 13 July 1870.
3
Denison was a serious amateur collector of shells.
4
After returning to England at the end of his term as Governor of Madras, Denison in 1868 was appointed chairman of a Royal Commission to inquire into the pollution of Britain's rivers.
5
M's copy of lecture not found. Denison delivered the first of two lectures on colonization to the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution on 8 November 1870 (Greenock advertiser, 10 November 1870, p. 2). The text of a similar address that he gave at Leamington Spa on 16 November 1870 is printed with the report of the meeting (Leamington Spa courier, 19 November 1870, p. 7. The London Times, 19 November 1870, p. 4, also carried a short report of the Leamington Spa lecture, noting that Denison proposed a Government investment scheme supporting carefully selected men that would have the result that 'the plethora of home population would be relieved, surplus capital be profitably enployed, the wants of the colonies met, and an additional market be created for home products'. He had been speaking on the topic throughout 1870; see, for example, the report of a meeting of the National Emigration League held at Mansion House London on 14 January 1870, Pall Mall gazette, 15 January 1870, p. 5.
6
MS annotation by M: 'General Sir Will. Denison, K.C.B., D.C.L., FRS'.

Please cite as “FVM-70-11-19,” 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 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/70-11-19