To Joseph Hooker   29 August 1871

Melbourne bot Garden,

29/8/71

 

The "Great Britain" dear Dr Hooker, proceeds to day and may arrive before the next English Mail. Yesterday I got your letter concerning the huge Todea;1 the plant was entirely at your discretionary disposal, more particularly as you defrayed all expenses for it.

In what better hands could the plant come than in those of the generous Mr Booth,2 whose noble establishment I visited in 1838 as a boy and 1847 before I left Europe. No better place can be found for it, than the one at Berlin, allotted to the plant by Mr Booth; but he alone can be the donor!

Will have a hunt after an other Todea, for which I will pay the £15 - : you kindly sent to Black[i]th and Co.3 Will try my best.

After being for 10 years passively and for 2 years actively persecuted by half a dozen individuals in a manner possible only in a young colony with universal suffrage, at last truth reason and fairness has prevailed and I have vanquished the lot. Parliament has just behaved nobly to me and restored me to my unimpaired power of administration and I feel as if I was born anew!4

Thanking you for your generous sympathy and powerful support & for your friendly help,

I remain your attached friend

Baron Ferd von Mueller

 

I will write by th[is] mail to the good Mr Edw Wilson.5

Kind regards to Mr Bentham

The plate of the Grevillea macrostylis6 came just most opportune! Every plant here is lost, by the intrusion on my position, and no end of other valuable shrubs, trees &c

 

Grevillea macrostylis

Todea

 
 
1
Letter not found, but see M to J. Hooker, 9 February 1871 and 6 September 1871.
2
John Booth, Flottbeck Nurseries, Hamburg.
3
See also M to J. Hooker, 6 September 1871; the letter from Hooker reporting the payment has not been found. Booth also reimbursed Hooker the £15! (See J. Booth to J. Hooker, 26 June 1871, in this edition as M71-06-26
4
During the parliamentary debate on 23 August 1871 on the budget vote for the Botanic Gardens, the Treasurer, Graham Berry, was reported as saying with reference to the position of William Ferguson in the Gardens that he was 'fully aware of the anomaly referred to, and arrangements should be made to retransfer Mr Ferguson to the Lands department as promptly as possible' ( Argus , 24 August 1871, p. 6) The apparent verbatim passage is shorter than that in the official record, Victoria, Parliamentary Debates , vol 13, pp 980-983 . Ferguson was not, however, finally moved from the Gardens until December 1872 (Fox (2004), p. 205. See also Cohn and Maroske (1996).
5
Letter not found.
6
Oliver (1871), drawn from a plant grown 'from seeds transmitted by our highly valued correspondent, Dr. Ferdinand von Mueller, from the rich Botanical Gardens of Melbourne'.

Please cite as “FVM-71-08-29b,” 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 20 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/71-08-29b