To Asa Gray   23 August 1876

Melbourne 23/8/76

 

Let me thank you for your friendly note, dear Dr Gray, and for the splendid volume on Californian plants1, for which anyhow I would have sent, but which I value all the more from your hands. I shall closely compare your diagnoses of the orders, as I have recently written the characters of them for my "school-flora",2 of which the first part is in print. I shall be able to improve now from your large experience on the characteristics, which I had adopted. —

I have used the term "fruitlets" for carpels, stalklets for pedicels &c to make the language as plain as possible for schools and have for want of space omitted many characteristics on ovules &c not absolutely requisite for recognition of an order or genus. There is very great difficulty here to get anything published, printing being far more costly here than in Europe and America. To Trimens journal I have sent last month some notes on the affinity of Plantagineae, which bear some relation to Loganiaceae.3 The seeds of Logania & Plantago are very similar and there are other points of concurrence.

I feel highly gratified about the friendly notice, concerning my last poor publications, in the records of the American Academy.4 Any words from you have such authority.

In the School-flora I have combined Brasenia with Cabomba, which may interest you.5 I do not see, how the two genera are to be kept separate. Of course I do not think anymore about Benthams remark6 and should never think to give him pain.

Ever your

Ferd. von Mueller.

 

Brasenia

Cabomba

Logania

Loganiaceae

Plantagineae

Plantago

 
1
Brewer, Watson & Gray (1876).
2
The Government stopped the printing of this work; when the Chief Secretary James McCulloch saw proof sheets he annotated them on 22 November 1876, saying he judged that the work would be of little or no value for schools (K76/13910, unit 883, VPRS 3991/P, VA 860 Chief Secretary’s Office, PROV). See Lucas, Maroske & Brown-May (2006).
3
B76.11.01.
4
Gray published a brief notice in the American journal of science, series 3, vol. 12 (1876), p. 156, of vol. 9 of M's Fragmenta and his Descriptive notes on Papuan plants. The former bore testimony, he wrote 'to the untiring industry, zeal, and ability with which Dr. Von Mueller keeps up his investigations into the botany of the adopted country for which he has done so much in various ways'; while the latter 'shows how, from his vantage point, he widens the already ample field, making the most of opportunity, ever active himself, and directing the activity and advantages of others'.
5
M cited the aborted Victorian School Flora, p. 23 in his transfer of Brasenia peltata to Cabomba in B76.10.01, p. 77.
6
See M to A. Gray, 7 August 1875 and 16 April 1876. In his 1874 address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Bentham had criticized the work of M and Gray.

Please cite as “FVM-76-08-23,” 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/76-08-23