To George Bentham   12 February 1877

12/2/77.

The two case with filices, dear Mr Bentham, will go by the "Newcastle" to Kew. I have not inserted the last supplements, as in the still ruined state of my Department I can only work a few hours on Sunday mornings in my Museum with comfort, and had really no leisure for the final sorting. Mr Baker can do it easily at Kew.

You refer me to the Linnaea for the description of Palms by Wendland & Drude,¹ but since the bot. Garden with its votes was withdrawn from me, I bec[o]me far too poor to purchase such journals, though I still manage to get Trimens & the bot. Magazine. Masters sends me the Chronicle without expense.² The men of science in Britain ought to have given me some kind support to maintain or restore my Department, especially as Edw. Wilson was so near to Darwin, not to speak of other influential Australians in London.

It would be anomalous to suppose, that A. Farnesiana was indigenously restricted in the E. hemisphere to Australia.³ The best authority on classic plants is Fraas, because unlike Sprengel & others he lived studied & travelled in Greece and other countries at the Medit[erranean] Sea.

Fraas gives both A. vera & A. farnesiana as Mediterranean;⁴ the latter is the 'Η λευκ ή ακανδοσ of Theophrastos, h. pl. 4, 3; and to it also belongs a passage of Dioscorides I, 113.⁵ Sprengel referred these quotations wrongly to Spartium scorpius.⁶ Like the Guilandinae⁷ I fancy this Acacia belongs to both hemispheres since historic times; where they came from before who will tell? Cocos has also an eastern & western representative though the nuts may have drifted from one continent to an other

Regardfully

Ferd von Mueller

Acacia farnesiana

Acacia Guilandinae

Acacia vera

Cocos

Filices

Spartium scorpius