To George Bentham   7 July 1877

7/7/77.

 

I am glad to learn from your last letter,1 dear Mr Bentham, that the 7th vol2 is progressing so rapidly. So after all you adopt Drude's multitudinous genera for the palms.3

After the large amount of labor spent by myself also on the Gramineae, the work with them ought to be particularly easy for you, especially with General Munro's help, and as you are saved the enormous trouble, which arose to me in the absense of many authentic specimens. Kunth already showed, that at least 3 species passed as Panicum brizoides4 I often have enveyed you and Hooker for the facility of working with the aid of Linnés and other collections of authentic importance and I am sure, you will be charitable, if in the absense of such aid and of a complete library, I fell into errors. But I do not merely copy synonyms; every species of Grasses &c I have always compared with those in my very large extraaustral collection. I have now also Panicum Myurum from North Queensland and will include it into the next number of the fragmenta.5

Can you not put the Macgregoria (Stackhousiaceae) into Hookers icones, as it is typical for a new suborder.6

The new Ministry has placed me in communication with a Parliamentary Committee, who, I trust, will grant me at least an office house, some ground, votes, laboratory?7 I have spent each of the last 4 years £500, to keep the wreck of the Department afloat, reducing a nominal income of £800 to an actual of £300 in this expensive country. I cannot see, what harm it would have done, if Hooker or you had even merely to myself written a single letter which I could have shown to M. P. expressive of your professional views of a Directors position. Sir Will Hooker would have done it for me.

Regardfully

Ferd. von Mueller

 

How is it, that we find Acacia Farnesiana common in Central Australia?

In the bot Garden with hardly any new show and much destruction £60 000 are spent in the last 4 years, against £1500 in the last 4 of my Directorship & science and supplies8 have ceased there since.

 

Acacia Farnesiana

Gramineae

Macgregoria

Panicum brizoides

Panicum Myurum

Stackhousiaceae

 
1
See G. Bentham to M, 30 April 1877.
2
Bentham (1863-78), vol. 7.
3
See M to G. Bentham, 8 November 1876.
4
Kunth (1833), vol. 1, pp. 77-8.
5
Panicum myurus? M mentioned the presence of Panicum myurusin B77.10.02, p. 114.
6
Hooker's icones plantarum (1877-79), vol. 13, p. 24, t. 1230.
7
On 23 June 1877 the Chief Secretary, G. Berry, established a Board comprising L. Smith, J. Bosisto and M. King, to 'inquire into the present position of Dr. Mueller, in relation to his professional duties, with the view to advise, what alteration, if any, is necessary, to afford him reasonable facilities for the due discharge of his scientific labours'. For the committee's report, see L. Smith to G. Berry, 11 July 1877.
8
In his first monthly report as Curator of the Botanic Garden, in August 1873, William Guilfoyle complained about the great amount of time lost in forwarding plants to other institutions and urged that 'the entire energies of the workmen should be confined to rendering the garden what it ought to be'. Since in subsequent annual reports Guilfoyle made no further mention of distributing plants in the way M had done, it would seem that the practice quickly ceased.

Please cite as “FVM-77-07-07a,” 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/77-07-07a