From Ferdinand von Mueller to George Bentham   31 May 1877

31/5/77.

I admire the vigor & unceasing steadiness of your researches, dear Mr Bentham; but then you are in happy independence and there is nothing to withdraw your attention from your glorious course of observations. As you ask so,¹ it is pleasing to record, that the cases with the Museum plants (now approximately 70) have travelled to & fro all right hitherto since the last 15 years except one with Leguminosae, the contents of which were in part sadly damaged by seawater, as mentioned at the time.² Let me hope, that the Gramineae, Cyperaceae and Filices will also come all safely back. This final discussion on this subject incites a wish of mine. Pray ask Dr Hooker, that in bare justice to me in my still continued departmental oppression, it may be distinctly mentioned in his next report, that an enormous number of species of Australian plants became, so I must assume, deposited in Kew from the collections of my Museum, while they passed through your hands.

What do you think of my "select plants".³ It has been a work of protracted toil.

Had I not been excluded from my Garden, the 300 pages by my daily Directorial observations and acquisitions might have advanced to 600.

Why does Mr Baker subordinate the Cordyline Murchisoniae to C. Haageana.⁴ Is there a misprint concerning the year of Koch's Wochenschrift.⁵

Like you I spent many months on the Cyperaceae,⁶ and my work was rendered difficult all the more, because the labourious researches of Boeckeler⁷ came under my notice only, after I had completed nearly the whole of my observations.⁸ In Scleropus⁹ I could neither see anything else than Scleria pygmaea. When it is considered how variable the position of the sterile or male flowers is in other genera of Cyperaceae (e.g. Carex) it will be difficult to assign to them generic value for Gahnia & Cladium, which two united (to my mind) form a very natural genus. Here arises this trouble. So long as we have one well marked genus, we know at once in the field at first sight what genus name to give; whereas, if you finally adopt your limitation as more than subgeneric, one has to pull the spikelets on every occasion asunder, before the name can be assigned, for to remember it would be almost impossible in most instances.

Now genera are all artificial, species only natural; the former only formed to aid our memory. Hence I always keep the genera as large as I can, to simplify the systematic naming. On this path I follow Poiret and Sprengel to unite Isolepis with Scirpus and also Chaetospora with Schoenus;¹⁰ if I adhered to R Browns nomenclature,¹¹ it was simply because it is here most in vogue, altho' at pages 36 & 38 of vol. IX fragmenta¹² and in others of my writings I approved of Sprengels & already Poiret's views.

From North Queensland I have now also a Miliusia.¹³ (How is Phaeanthus really to be distinguished?)

I shall watch with interest the arrival of the pages of the last volume,¹⁴ and I trust that then your time will otherwise untaxed to bring the most important of all your works, the "genera"¹⁵ to a conclusion.

Always with regardful attachment your

Ferd. von Mueller.

Carex

Chaetospora

Cladium

Cordyline Haageana

Cordyline Murchisoniae

Cyperaceae

Filices

Gahnia

Gramineae

Isolepis

Leguminosae

Miliusia

Phaeanthus

Schoenus

Scirpus

Scleria pygmaea

Scleropus