To William Vale   5 September 1872

Melbourne bot. Garden

5/9/72.1

Honorable Sir.

I observe in the journals just issued, that you desire any medals, awarded to me, to be placed into the Industrial Museum.2 With the greatest readiness I comply with your request, more particularly as I have no family, and scarcely ever any opportunity to show these tokens of kindness to any one. Accordingly I have placed all the medals, which I have, now into a case, left under your adress at the Industrial Museum, of which you are a trustee.

The decorations, graciously conferred on me by Sovereigns, it would not be proper to place in the Museum, as most of these insignia have to be returned after my death to the thrones, from which I received them.

Respectfully your

Ferd von Mueller

 

Two large Exhibition Medals, Melbourne, 1866 – 1867.

1 Large Silver and 1 large Bronze Medal, Sydney, 1870.

2 Bronze Medals, London, 1862.

1 Bronze Medal, Royal Hort. Soc. Lond., 1862.

1 Bronze Medal, Melbourne, 1854.

1 Bronze Medal, Brisbane, 1866.

1 Galileo Silver Medal, 1870.

1 Gold Medal, Petersburg Exhibition, 1869.

1 Bronze Martius Medal, 1864.

1 - - smaller, 1864.

1 Hooker Medallion

1 Silver Medal, Pa[ris] Exhibition, 1867

1 Victorian Exhibition Seal 1862

1 Berzelius Bronze Medal; In all: […]3

I may add, that my participation in Exhibitions was never [with] a view of competing f[or] prizes, and that in all instances these [Ex]hibitions involved la[rge] expenditures from my private resources.

B.V.M.

1
For reply see M. Clarke to M, 6 September 1872 and 21 September 1872.
2
In the debate on the estimates for the Botanical Garden in the Legislative Assembly on 3 September 1872, William Vale said that ‘he was astonished that the Government should have allowed public officers in various departments to receive and appropriate to themselves prize medals for work and for articles exhibited which were the property of the Government. These medals did not belong to those individuals, but to the Government, and should have been placed in the public museum’ (Argus, 4 September 1872, p. 6, col. c).
3
Cut off by binding.

Please cite as “FVM-72-09-05,” 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/72-09-05