To Redmond Barry   10 March 1871

71.03.10

Melbourne botan Garden

10/3/71.

I am sure you will excuse me, dear Sir Redmond, when I reply to your letter of the 9th,¹ as all the Answers, received from the Committee, are worthy of reconsideration.

1, If a fair claim arises for work, done with the knowledge and consent of the Committee of the Industrial Museum, though such consent for want of quorums or from some oversight was not legally given, I should never have thought it possible, that such a claim would be utterly ignored. All I wished was this, that in the next estimate as a supplemental Item the sum should be included. Probably my wish to that effect was not understood. Such items do annually occur in a few instances on the estimates, and the Government and Parliament are always ready to reimburse any outlay, which fairly was incurred for public institutions, like in this instance, under unusual circumstances.

2. That my modest request for some aid, to proceed with new work for the Museum, meets with repeated curt refusals, I do regret much, not for my sake but for the benefit of the Industrial Museum. What use can the men in the Industrial Museum be to me, when new articles have to be prepared in my own establishment and under my constant local supervision here. All I wanted was a man of some chemical and mechanical training at 7/ a day, who would carry out the practical manipulations for producing new industrial articles. My Department is too depoverished, as repeatedly stated before, to afford such aid.

3. That for the sake of £8 or thereabouts a long correspondence should be required to be carried on in reference to the printing of an original essay as an appendix to my lecture, is a fact so humiliating to me as a professional man, that I should not have believed it possible, had I not experienced the event. You could however not possibly have looked carefully over the manuscript of this intended appendix, dear Sir Redmond, because the very information indicated in the marginal notes of your letter is exactly contained in the index, so far as it is on literal record while the latter contains not a single word, that is not important for industrial culture and technologic uses.

I conclude this letter with a painful regret, that a remarkably well endowed institution, should withhold illiberally even a trifle of its means to promote the progress of one of the principal branches of industry, while for the advancement of all industries this technologic museum was formed.²

I am, dear Sir Redmond,

your obedient and regardful

Ferd. von Mueller.

His Honor Sir Redmond Barry, Kn

President of the Museum Trustees³