To George Bentham1    14 April 1876

14/4/76.

 

It is quite wonderful, dear Mr Bentham, to watch you working. I trust, however, that you not overstrain your nervous system. Do not distress yourself about the Liliaceae &c in your hand; as I said before the genera 2 are far more important than the Austr. Fl.3 Though of course occasional inconvenience does arise, if a large portion of the main collection is long away, yet for all that you ought not be troubled. Let me gratulate you to your long merited election in the French Academy.4

With regardful remembrance

Ferd. von Mueller.

 

Now rather more than half a thousand additional species (for vol I-VI)5 are described in the fragmenta. I trust in time to bring the additions up to a full thousand.

 

Liliaceae

 
 
1
MS black edged; M's brother-in-law, Eduard Wehl, died on 11 February 1876.
2
Bentham & Hooker (1862–83).
3
Bentham (1863-78). Bentham had just shipped M’s Liliaceae back to Australia; see G. Bentham to M, 13 April 1876 (in this edition as 76-04-13a).
4
Bentham was elected a Corresponding Member of the Paris Academy of Sciences on 24 May 1875, in succession to Alphonse de Candolle, following the latter's promotion to Associé Étranger (Index biographique des membres de l'Académie des Sciences … [Paris, 1978]).
5
Of Bentham (1863-73).For a discussion of the failure to publish the proposed supplements to Flora australiensis, see Clements (1998) and Lucas (2003).

Please cite as “FVM-76-04-14,” 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/76-04-14