Melbourne botan Garden
Christmasday/ 1870
My best thanks are due to you, dear Professor Parlatore, for the great honor, which the illustrious administrators of the museum of Florence conferred on me, by sending me so generously the medal of your institution.1 I accept it with much gratitude, not as a reward for what little I may have done for you, but as an encouragement to serve your noble purposes of advancing in Italy the interests of natural science. The Chevalier Biagi aids me always very kindly in my transmissions, and they would have been far more copious within the last year, had I not had so many disturbances in the administration of my department. These difficulties I have not overcome yet, and this must account for any apparent lassitude in my communications.
I managed however to send by this months mail a large supply of seeds of Corypha (Livistona) australis, fresh collected, for Italian Gardens. This hardy palm is now almost extinct in our native forests, where it will grow in latitude 37°30 S to the hight of 90 feet!
This moment I am revising the Coniferae of the botanic Garden, at which many are in culture, and for which examination your elaboration in D.C. prodr.2 affords such great facility.
With my most grateful regards
Ferd von Mueller
Pray express my homage to the Commandeur Negri, to whose most kind communication3 I will respond by one of the next mails.
Coniferae
Corypha australis
Livistona australis
Please cite as “FVM-70-12-25,” 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