To Joseph Hooker1    17 May 1875

Melbourne

17/5/75

 

I enclose a few fresh seeds of Neptunia monosperma, dear Dr Hooker, which may add one to your few sensitive plants in the conservatory.2 By the despatch bag you will receive parts of a male amentum, and of a female rachis of the Cycas, which succeeded to push anew at Kew.3 I fancy, you will be eager to bring this successful horticutural feat before the possessors of large conservatories through the bot. Magazine. The transmitted Australian Mahernia or Hermannia may interest you. As the genus extends to Arabia, the occurrence of a species in Central Australia is after all not so very remarkable.

Don't you think, that your own Eucalyptus urnigera, E. coccifera and E. vernicosa would grow in dry places of South England (not Kew). Surely 300 out the 365 days are wet in the mountains, where these particular species grow, besides lots of snow falls on them in the winter. So the climate of England, even with its long autumnal moisture can not be too wet for them

Sir Will. Macarthur will send me the dry plants, which his collectors will or may gather in Mr M'Leays Expedition to New Guinea4 and young Baron Von Huegel,5 with whose venerable father I maintained a correspondence til his death, will also place his New Guinea and other collections at my disposal.

In all likelihood you may receive also collections from the Sydney bot Garden, to be formed by a collector,6 who embarked in the same Mission ship with the young Baron. In such an event, I would propose to leave all Indian forms to you, but wish much to reserve the elaboration of the Australian and also all alpine types to myself. Of course after a close investigation of the alps here, I am much interested in the vegetation of the icy zones of the nearest country. Asa Gray also wrote some time since, that polynesia, of which N Guinea to a certain extent is a part, ought to fall, so far as plants are concerned, to myself as an Australian worker. If we all divide the labor, so that double doing is avoided, we may be able to complete the system of plants by the end of the century in its main details.

Trusting that your sadness7 has not impaired your strength as it has mine, I remain, dear Doctor Hooker, your regardful

Ferd. von Mueller.

 

I delivered yesterday a long lecture on tea culture before the Agricultural Club of Ballarat.8

Bauers figures of Cycas media (or if you like Cycas angulata) are very good.9

 

Cycas angulata

Cycas media

Eucalyptus coccifera

Eucalyptus urnigera

Eucalyptus vernicosa

Hermannia

Mahernia

Neptunia monosperma

1
MS annotation: 'And Dec 22nd & answered sending duplicates of various [cucurbitae]'. Letter not found; but see M to J. Hooker, 24 February 1876 (in this edition as 76-02-24a).
2
W. Thiselton-Dyer to C. Darwin, 16 July 1877, reported that 'All our seeds of Neptunia failed to germinate'. See Burchardt et al. (2017), p. 289.
3
See M to J. Hooker, May 1874 (in this edition as 74-05-00).
4
Macarthur's collector was Thomas Reedy; see Sydney morning herald, 20 October 1875, p. 6, and B75.11.01, p. 3 (where, however, the wrong initial is given).
5
Anatole von Huegel accompanied Rev. G. Brown to New Guinea in 1875.
6
Carl Walter.
7
Presumably a reference to the death of Hooker's first wife, Frances Harriet, née Henslow, on 13 November 1874; see J. Hooker to M, 30 November 1874.
8
B75.05.01. The lecture was delivered on 15 May, see report in Australasian, 22 May 1875, p. 663.
9
Miquel (1842), tabs. I, III.

Please cite as “FVM-75-05-17c,” 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/75-05-17c