To Joseph Hooker   24 January 1871

Melbourne

24/1/71

 

I am glad to hear, dear Dr Hooker, that you are proceeding so well with the genera.1 When you will have done the Rubiaceae and Mr Bentham the Compositae, there will be less difficulty, as the later orders of D.C.2 are resting on generic characters better worked out.

I am glad to know we have Coffea Benghalensis in Australia.3 In a few years we will have a capital supplemental material for the Flora,4 and new phanerogamic species will then hardly be left to be discovered. Indeed even now Dallachy can scarcely ever find anything new in N. E. Australia.

My difficulties here are not yet overcome. God knows where it will end. You have no idea of the meanness and lowness, existing in Victoria, among much of people of really highly principle. I think really the share of bad people of influence is here far greater then in most other countries.

I am sure, Prof Oliver will gladly take notice of the huge Eucalyptus amygdalina; it being the tallest tree in her Majestys whole empire, European or colonial anywhere. Surely thus far it is worth mentioning in a suitable English publication.

I am glad we are to get the rose-wood plant (Convolvulus scoparius)5

Poor Anderson! How soon he passed away! Overworked and worried.6

Always your

Ferd. von Mueller

 

What a very sad loss that of poor Prof Anderson. Yet so young, and so clever, and so excellent. How will his poor father get over it? I suppose the poor Gentleman overworked himself, which we are all apt to do.

A lecture of mine is just under press but it will not be ready to send it you til next mail.7

 

Coffea Benghalensis

Compositae

Convolvulus scoparius

Eucalyptus amygdalina

Rubiaceae

 
 
1
Bentham & Hooker (1862-83). See J. Hooker to M, 13 November 1870.
2
Candolle (1823-73).
3
See J. Hooker to M, 13 November 1870.
4
Bentham (1863-78).
5
See J. Hooker to M, 13 November 1870.
6
Thomas Anderson died aged 38 in Edinburgh on 26 October 1870.
7
The postscript is written on a separate sheet. It is assumed to belong with this letter from its sequence in the guard book, although it would also fit with M to J. Hooker, 5 January 1871. The lecture referred to is probably B71.04.03 which was delivered on 3 November 1870 (Argus, 4 November 1870, p. 5).

Please cite as “FVM-71-01-24,” 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 19 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/71-01-24