From Charles Birch   29 May 1873

Bowen Downs 29th May 1873

I forward by this mail my dear Baron some Botanical specimens obtained during a tour to the Westward in the neighbourhood of Mueller's Range and I think that some are new as I have not seen them elsewhere — the red tufted flower is very beautiful when growing — the yellow seed also the faint pinkish flower of the same genera are from plants which produce a fibre equal to the best Manilla and grows in great profusion in the swampy country to the North there is another plant with longish flowers and leaves with serrated edges, this grows in the clefts of the rock and has a very unpleasant sickly odour there is also a specimen without flower which is highly aromatic — when green, like paragoni[.]¹ I also send you a few opals and a Metal which I believe to be Sulphide of Silver if so I have found a very extensive Mine and of good value. I will send you my diary, and a map² at my earliest leisure — the tree you mention in your last³ I have seen and should I again see it I will send a branch even without flowers merely to verify it.

The Mueller range is reddish sandstone with dykes of porphyry — there are numerous isolated hills in the neighbourhood — one particularly I shall call Mt Mueller⁴ not so much from its size but that it forms a distinguishing feature on the landscape of which the Müeller range forms a part — rest assured that all I can do toward your great work now being published I will do with pleasure and my greatest regret is that I am not sufficiently independent to devote my whole time to explorarion and the collection of the flora of this colony and the minerals with which it abounds —

Yours very sincerely

Chas. Weldon Birch⁵