To Joseph Hooker   5 November 1873

Melbourne

5/11/73.

I thought to have been able, dear Dr Hooker, to have sent you some prints by this mail, but a short essay on plants of the New Hebrides, containing 4 or 5 new species, it¹ not yet quite through the press.² A short memoir on fossils is also printed, but not yet issued.³

I have done a little to the Glumaceae lately, particularly Gramineae. We have, I see, Eleusine Indica and Eleusine verticillata. R Br's E. radulans is only E. cruciata. This research requires great care.

It is very strange that most people here, indeed almost all of them, say or think that the duties of a Governm. Botanist are merely to work on dry plants in a Museum!!, yet I assure you, they have not the slightest hesitation in asking though I have in most cases no longer means for the purpose⁴ services in phytochemistry, in medical phytology, pathology of plants, in regard to vegetable technology, new resources, new exports, new introductions, supplies, test culture, indeed on anything from the fungi of a diptheritic membrane or of the cholera stools to the most aesthetic subjects of gorgeous culture. Of course you are Gov Botanist of England and Botanist to the British Government like your venerable father through and in virtue of your position of Director of the bot Garden of Kew. You know best that⁵ Without the organisation, the staff, the votes, the appliances of Kew Garden you could not perform your duties of Gov Botanist. The extent of my ruin as Departmental Chief is not less than I anticipated, after I feel now since 4 months how it is impossible for me to do any longer real good to the community.

In private life Mr Bentham may limit his researches in accordance with his inclination. But it is very different in deed, when the responsible duties in all direction toward large communities, are devolving officially on us! And these duties in a young country like this colony are more responsible than anywhere.

Mr Bentham will not require, so I learn, the Liliaceae Junceae, Glumaceae &c before Easter.⁶ So I hope to render his work easy by elaborating the rest of them beforehand. I suppose that the Irideae & Haemodoraceae are on the way back. As yet I have no bill of loading concerning them, but the Orchideae have safely come back.

I learn from a relation of Dr Wyville Thomson, that the Challenger⁷ will also come to Melbourne, contrary to the first program. I shall gladly do what is still within my means to aid the scientific men of the expedition, but I feel most deeply & most thoroughly the difference of my position, since I can no longer receive them or aid them as Director of the bot. Garden. I have no longer a real Department with proper votes and am thus helpless or nearly so, as all my private means are now gone also.

I hope to send you by next mail an other, but only a small, number of the fragmenta. At Rockingham's Bay Mr Hill has found now also Musa uranoscopos⁸ or some other erect flowering Banana. The ascent of Mount Bellenden Ker, urged by me since 10 years, is now at last to be accomplished.

Always with regardful remembrance your

Ferd.von Mueller.

Eleusine cruciata

Eleusine Indica

Eleusine radulans

Eleusine verticillata

Glumaceae

Gramineaea

Haemodoraceae

Irideae

Junceae

Liliaceae

Musa uranoscopos

Orchideae