To Joseph Hooker   8 September 1873

Melbourne

8/9/73.

 

It is very kind of you, dear Dr Hooker, that you will send me a set of Dr Tates plants.1 It is of course important for me, that I should have here the Australian material for working as complete as possible.

I am glad that the new important Eucalyptus products (from the tar) will receive attention at the Exhibition. Such oils could of course be produced by the thousands of tons from the waste woods.2

I never had a sufficiency of flowers of Boronia megastigma to operate on for scent extract or oil. The fragrance of the bushes attract the visitors, and the people in this "free" country are so utterly uncontrolable that every bid of the bushes is broken and carried off. Indeed nearly all of the Boronia bushes are destroyed by the mutilation caused by visitors. Even any Gynerium culm when evening out with its feathery flowers is carried off with impunity. Remonstrance is only answered by insolense and the police protection is utterly insufficient.

With grateful remembrance of all your goodness

Ferd. von Mueller

 

I have for several successive mails awaited your or Mr Benthams or Mr Olivers opinion regarding my supposed new genus Macgregoria from Central Australia.3 I sent you my best specimens. I did not wish more than a single word of opinion as the manuscript is worked out and sent with it. Mr M'Gregor was my best supporter in Parliament. You have no idea, how much a timely answer to my question may serve me.4

I had already Maouts & Decaisne great work, which I purchased when it came out; but I have now also purchased (of course for my private library, as for 7 years no vote for books was forthcoming,) your Ladys excellent translation, with your important additions5

6Brogniarts7 attempt to locate some of the Monochlamydeae among the Monopetaleae would certainly prove in vain, but they can all, except the Gymnospermeae, be well located among Thalamiflorae, Disciflorae & Calyciflorae and only by these means the natural system will be perfected. We are so apt to think of showy & large flowers among these so called highly developed plants, I mean Thalamiflorae & Calyciflorae; but if we even look on such a commonly known genus as Dodonaea, we must see that the insignificant flowers of Urticeae &c do not remove them from families full of plants with gorgeous flowers, such as Aesculus.

In Philydreae 3 genera occur.

 

Aesculus

Boronia megastigma

Calyciflorae

Disciflorae

Dodonaea

Eucalyptus

Gymnospermeae

Gynerium

Macgregoria

Monochlamydeae

Monopetaleae

Philydreae

Thalamiflorae

Urticeae

1
This section is marked in the margin with a cross. The plants, collected by Thomas Tate on William Hann's expedition in the Cape York Peninsula, Qld, were requested in M to J. Hooker, 25 March 1873.
2
See M to J. Hooker, 21 April 1873 (in this edition as 73-04-21b).
3
M first sought an opinion in M to G. Bentham, 28 January 1873 (in this edition as 73-01-23b), and M to J. Hooker, 28 January 1873 (in this edition as 73-01-23a), repeating the request in M to J. Hooker, 18 May, 11 August and 1 December 1873 (in this edition as 73-12-01b). An opinion was given in G. Bentham to M, 10 February 1874. M listed the plant, Macgregoria racemosa, without formal description in his account of Giles' plants in B73.04.01, p. 129; it was described as Macgregoria racimegira in B74.04.01, p. 161, where he indicated that he had consulted 'Bentham, Masters et Oliver' about its admissibility into Stackhousieae.
4
This section is marked in the margin with a cross.
5
i.e. Frances Harriet Hooker's translation of Le Maout & Decaisne (1868), which was published in 1873.
6
The remaining text, on f. 314, may not have been originally a part of this letter.
7
Brongniart (1843); see discussion in Brongniart (1868), p. 4, where he points out that the usual divisions within the Dicotyledoneae are partly artificial rather than natural, and that it becomes more natural if it is recognized that apetalous and polypetalous species may be close together and not placed at each end of the Dicotyledoneae.

Please cite as “FVM-73-09-08b,” 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 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/73-09-08b