To Joseph Hooker   15 July 1873

Melbourne

15/7/73

Private

I write a few private lines, dear Dr Hooker, after my fuller official letter has been despatched to you.¹ Capt. Stakepool of the Shannon brings several Extra Cycas stems, which I place as a private gift at your disposal. You will likely take them all into your hothouses, as more than one may fail to thrive again. I have written to Mr Theodore Müller,² to whom you showed some kindness, when he passed through England,³ and who has recently been appointed to the venerable Prof Reichenbach, sen. (aged now 83) as Secretary in the Museum, that he might ask you for one of the Cycas stems, should he desire it for Reichenbachs Conservatory at the Dresden bot. Garden, or for his Museum of Natural History. You may wish perhaps also to present one to Edinburgh, or to Oxford or Cambridge. But I leave that entirely to your discretion, as I have secured them at my own cost. But I may add, that they are three or four times more expensive than Dicksonia stems.⁴

I write this from an Hotel,⁵ where I have sought refuge, after being driven within a months notice out of my creation after 21 years domicile in the bot. Garden. The latter ceases to be a scientific institution, and is merged into Gov. House Garden & Park, the new Viceregal Palais being under process of being built close to it.

A young Sydney nurseryman, who can lay no claim to scientific knowledge whatever,⁶ has taken my place under the name of Curator and stands not under me. Indeed he is an independent administrator under the Minister, a near relative of whom he is.⁷ What the fate of the rare plants will be I can foresee, when I hear that this young person, who never in his life heard even the names of a multitude of plants accumulated by me, called my select nurseryplants, containing the rarest young trees, Tea, Cinchonas, the West Australian plants (at the latter of which your mind would delight) "rubbish" when he first came to the Garden. This I learnt accidentally, as I shall never set my foot again in the garden unless as Director, nor do I allow any of the Garden employees to communicate with me

Under such circumstances I would not advise you to send any valuable plants at present to the bot. Garden.

My absolute want of private means has forced me against my inclination to continue the position of Gov Botanist. But imagine such an Officer without his control over the bot. Garden. But that is not the worst. The whole vote (beyond my modest salary and now additional House rent) is £300 (three hund £) while the observatory gets £3000. Out of these 300 have even to come the 100 for Bentham, should he require the sum by June 1874. To my modest application for addition to that sum I got yesterday a curt and blunt refusal from the Prime Minister.⁸ But that is not the worst. I do not expect, that even my Office will be continued on the estimates next year, for the following obvious reasons

It will be impossible for me to do justice to the duties of Gov. Botanist without the machinery and appliances, which I created for the Office at the bot. Garden; hence I shall be likely sent adrift as a useless individual, because everybody will come to me as if I commanded yet over my former resources, just like every Clergyman, Schoolmaster, trustee of Cemetery or Park, came to me, as if nothing had happened, when I was in Oct last reduced from 10 Gardeners to 3 (of course the 6 or 7 Gardeners withdrawn from me, were immediately sent back to the Garden, after I was driven out) 2,⁹ the Minister of course never visits my Department. His banking merchant squatting and family interests take up any spare time, which he has left after attending to the most important duties of his Office. Yet he is not unlikely to allow himself to be misled even on professional matters of mine by traducers. 3, you must not forget that I am a Teutonian by birth, altho' I have spent more years in her Majestys Australian possessions as a naturalized subject than in my native country. 4, the revenue may any moment fall short, and then I shall be one of the first, who is struck from the list. 5, I have to contend more with the silly talk of supposed friends here than with the small clique of my adversaries. One will say O! you can go elsewhere, never minding that even the works on Austr plants are incompleted, that I must leave the main part of the collection and library behind, and that I am too old to go again for a dozen years in the saddle to study the vegetation of an other country or reestablish a new Department, even if an other state could be induced to afford the necessary large means. An other says simply though I might have no bread, I had fame (to live on) An other comes after I am deprived of my Directorship to gratulate me to my promotion, that is to say, the proposition to become an intruder on the University and an interloper on the Professors and Lecturers there, even if my constantly reccurent bronchial catarrhs allowed me to lecture regularly. An other lot of people will say, that I ought to be grateful and rejoyce to be relieved of drugery¹⁰ and now to devote my whole time to science. They don't mind at all that the Government or rather the Prime Minister refused me a Pension,¹¹ that I have still all the responsibility of Office without proper means of working, that my professional honor and pride is wounded. But then they exclaim, "you got an increase" as if the miserable sum, which they added to a salary (since 21 years much smaller than that of any of my compeers and much more heavily taxed) represented anything else than House rent. The Museum is left me, but as since 14 years no additions are made to it, though I often applied for it, I cannot work there. It is merely an overcrowded store room for plants. Besides it cannot be heated and is therefore too cold for me in winter. I could not rent a House, simply as I have no means to furnish it, and cannot be responsible for a years rent, when my position may under the civil service act be abolished any day, when Parliament is not sitting. What will be my fate then? I get one month salary for each years service at the rate of the last 3 years salary. Therefore about one thousand £ once for ever! If I resign I get nothing. A widow is also entitled to nothing. I might claim 1/60 for each years service as pension in utterly ruined health, but it would be an uncertainty, as at any moment I might be called upon to perform other duties, such as physical incabability may still admit of. That is my fate after 26 years generous & disinterested service to Austr and that arises mainly from the persecution and misrepresentation of 2 or 3 of Edw Wilsons and M'Kinnons men!¹²

Your colleague as C.B., Dr MacKinnon is Prof of Milit Surgery in England.¹³

Could you as a honored Colleague have an interview with him without showing him this letter.

No one could have done more with the means at my command and no family man so much

I should like that Dr Masters is privately made acquainted with the generality of the changes here

The greater part of my private library is packed up in a [stableHouse]

I have nothing done to deserve this degredation and persecution! Am not even recording my politic vote

and never give a politic opinion.

Of course Verbenas, Pelargon,¹⁴ Petunias &c, of which I had many, are now the order of the day.¹⁵

Cinchona

Cycas

Dicksonia

Pelargonium

Petunia

Verbena