13/3/77
I send according to your special request, dear Mr Bentham, the wanting pages of your copy of the VIII vol. of the fragm.1 Indeed I lost the courage to send the work at all, after the remarks on it at the British Association, which were far more applicable to any journal or Magazine.2 Moreover it is not even quoted in the genera,3 when it is the sole authority of the existence of any particular genus in Australia.
I have now sent the first ferns off also, and I hope, that now after 16 years cooperation on the flora you will admit that I have acquitted myself honorably and disinterestedly, atho' I still regret that your great talent and your time were not instead concentrated on the genera and tropical African Flora.
Regardfully
Ferd. von Mueller.
Bentham (1875) argued in his address to the 1874 Belfast meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science that the best botanical publications were regional Floras or critical monographs of orders or genera. He was very disparaging of 'detached or miscellaneous specific descriptions':
'Had I to report only on the progress, and not on the present state also, of systematic botany, I should here stop, for the great majority of recent detached and miscellaneous descriptions are almost as much impediments as aids to the progress of science. I have too often in my Linnean Addresses, especially in those of 1862 and 1871, animadverted on the mischief they produce to enter now into any details; I can only lament that the practice continues, and is even rendered necessary, by considerations not wholly scientific. Horticulturalists must have names for their new importations. It is due to travellers who ... have supplied... specimens.... that [they] should be speedily made known; it is even important to science that any new form influencing materially methodical arrangements should be published as soon as ascertained. But all this is very different from the barren diagnoses of garden-catalogues, and the long uncontrasted descriptions got up for the futile purpose of securing priority of name. I own that I have myself erred in the want of consideration in the publication of some of the species of 'Plantae Hartwegianae'; and some descriptive miscellanea, even by men who stand very high in the science (such as Miquel's ' Prolusiones' . . . and Baron von Mueller's 'Fragmenta') are rendered comparatively useless from their utter want of method.’
Bentham goes on to admit the occasional necessity of such publications, and to suggest rules 'based on long practical experience':
'No detached description of a new species should be ventured upon unless the author has ample means of reviewing the group ... if any doubt [exists] he should refrain from giving it a name ... The description ... should be full, but contrasted, and accompanied by a discussion of affinities with previously known species, and an indication of the place the new one should occupy in the several monographs and floras in which it would be included. ... An illustration ... with analytical details, should never be omitted, where circumstances admit of it.’ (Bentham [1874], p. 53).
Please cite as “FVM-77-03-13,” 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 25 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/77-03-13