To Joseph Hooker   1 January 1872

Virtute Ingienioque Valemus 1

 

Melbourne bot Garden

Newyearsday/ 1872

 

Allow me, dear Dr Hooker, to offer you my best felicitation to the New year. May it be to you & your family a joyous one.

To me it has commenced in deep sadness and undeserved humiliation, arising mainly from the shameless persecution of Mr Edw Wilson’s papers since a low person from an other journal took charge of the horticultural section of the Argus & Australasian. What a poor triumph for a once respectable paper to rob me of my Director ship and disgrace by the grossest misrepresentations my name, and try to to2 bring permanently the independent administration of a botanic garden into the power of a common gardener without any merit of even the slightest kind, but who last year was fined for drunkenness & streetrow before our own police court!3

Be it enough. These things can only happen in Victoria! —

I got the two cases with dry plants. A splendid addition to our collections.4

Accept my best thanks for this generous gift.

Always your

Ferd von Mueller

1
Embossed letterhead incorporating the design for his baronial coat of arms that M had sent to Stuttgert (see M to J. von Wächter, 8 October 1871 [in this edition as 71-10-08a]).
2
and try to interlined abovename, to bring.
3
See M to J. Hooker, 6 November 1870, in this edition as 70-11-06a, for the allegation that William Ferguson had been fined for drunkenness in October 1870.
4
The contents of the cases have not been identified.

Please cite as “FVM-72-01-01,” 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/72-01-01