To Asa Gray   16 April 1876

Easter /1876.1

 

Let me thank you for your noble letter,2 dear Prof Gray. Like yourself I find, that if any letters are left unanswered at once, they are not likely ever to be answered at all; for as a punishment of the remissness the heap of unanswered letters becomes then more formidable every day and I give it up as a bad job in despair. However the excuses of the first Napoleon3 in these respects do not apply to so great man as yourself. I have sent you the nineth volume of the fragmenta,4 also prints on Papuan plants5 &c The reprint of the article in the Victorian Volume for the Philadelphia Exhibition6 might be useful for your southern states in a pamphlet form. It ought to pay any printer. Perhaps you deem these poor efforts of mine worthy of a few friendly words of encouragement in your journal or Academy.7

Of course I do not wish any retraction of the remarks made at the Brit Assoc. by a most venerable and revered man, but after my publication is publicly stigmatized by him as almost worthless or useless, I cannot possibly send it to him any longer with any selfrespect.8

What a grand completion will be your Californian work for the exhaustive volumes on your E. states.9 I trust you will live to include the Mexican Flora. Is there any publication, from which I could glean knowledge of the technical value of the Mexican Oaks, Pines, &c &c10

With regardful remembrance

Ferd. von Mueller.

1
Easter Day was 16 April in 1876.
2
Letter not found.
3
Napoleon Bonaparte.
4
The last two fascicles of vol. 9 (i.e. B75.12.01 and B75.13.01) were published in December 1875.
5
Probably B75.11.01 and B76.04.01, the latter of which was published on 7 April 1876.
6
Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia, 1876; the article in question was B75.09.03.
7
Gray published a brief notice of the 9th volume of M's Fragmenta and his Descriptive notes on Papuan plants in American journal of science, series 3, vol. 12, 1876, p. 156.
8
See also M to A. Gray, 7 August 1875, and M to G. Bentham, 13 March 1877. In Bentham's address to the 1874 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Bentham [1874]), he had called for more regional Floras and critical monographs of orders or genera, and had made disparaging remarks about 'detached or miscellaneous specific descriptions', citing M's Fragmenta among his examples of such 'comparatively useless' works.
9
Probably Brewer, Watson & Gray (1876).
10
See also M to L. Haynald, 24 January 1882 and 22 November 1882.

Please cite as “FVM-76-04-16,” 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/76-04-16