Melbourne bot Garden
27/3/73
I ought to mention to you, dear Dr Hooker, that the articles sent by me to the London Exhibition (chiefly chemical productions from woods) might readily be secured for your Museum on application to Mr Bright, the Commissioner for Victoria1
Will anything be published specially on Dr Kirk's collections from Kilimanjaro, or will they merely be inserted into the general material for Olivers work?2
I suppose Mr Bentham restored Forster's Laxmannia and suppressed RBrown Petrobium in favor of Bartlingia, as indicated by me in the 7th vol of the fragmenta. Pfeiffer has made no change.3
It must be very pleasing to you to see Botanic Magazine enter on the seventh thousand!4 What a noble monument of your and your fathers industry
With kind regards
Ferd. von Mueller
Bartlingia
Laxmannia
Petrobium
Charles Edward Bright. This sentence is marked with a cross in the margin. See the entry for 12 November 1873 in RBG Kew, Museum Entry Book, Kew, 1861-79, p. 357.
Oliver (1868-77); see also J. Hooker (1875a), a paper read on 19 June 1873 that outlined the collection made for Kirk by 'the Rev. Mr New'.
Pfeiffer (1873-4) was issued in parts of 80 pages (TL2), but not consecutively. M could have seen that Laxmannia was not given as a synonym in the entry for Bartlingia, vol.1(1), p. 370, in a part issued before 14 June 1872, and Bartlingia as a synonym for Laxmannia in vol. 2(1), p. 44 in a part issued before 12 July 1872. His comment in M to J. Hooker, 18 May 1873, that he had seen only the early fascicles implies that he had not seen the entry for Petrobium, which listed Laxmannia as a synonym, in vol. 2(1), which was announced in Botanische Zeitung, 21 February 1873, p. 127.
Bentham, in Bentham & Hooker (1862–83), vol. 2, part 1, p. 355 (1873) retained Petrobium, treating Forster's Laxmannia as a synonym. He later (Bentham (1863-78), vol 7, pp. 63-4) explained his reasons for departing from nomenclatural priority, writing: 'The genus [Laxmannia, R. Br] is limited to Australia. F. Mueller, Fragm. vii. 88, [i.e. B70.04.01] proposes to restore the name of Laxmannia to the Composite genus Petrobium, and to give the present one the name of Bartlingia, but this disturbance of a long adopted nomenclature would appear to me to be productive of much confusion, without any corresponding advantage'. M persisted with Bartlingia in his Census, B89.12.03, treating Laxmannia as a synonym.
Plate 6000 of the Botanical magazine was printed in vol. 98, 1872.
Please cite as “FVM-73-03-27b,” 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