To Edward Ramsay   30 July 1877

30/7/77.

 

Let me congratulate yourself, dear Mr Ramsay, to your important zoologic successes. How envyable a position, to be at an institution rich in material & working means. How sad my position compared to yours!1

Tell me kindly, have you anything to do with the expedition, which is just lately gone to N.E. New Guinea?

Mr Moore seems to have a collector in it. Do you think I could get the plants from him for my work on the "Papuan Vegetation."2 Is this work of mine also to be interfered with, after I mainly or solely drew attention to the important mountain vegetation there? Workers in England have no end of material from Central Africa, India & at Kew, British Museum &c So they might leave New Guinea to me. See whether you can get me the material from Mr Moore. I have given £50 out of my own starvation purse to Goldie, but perhaps shall get nothing of consequence, altho I am to pay another £50. If my whole Department through the unfair comparisons with Sydney & Adelaide had not been overthrown and if thus my presense was not required here, I would go for a few months to N Guinea myself

Tell me, when set the rains in there? Is it too late to go by the September mail. I cannot by the August Steamer, as I must first see the trifle, left for me on the estimates, through the parliament! Is there a chance of obtaining zoologic duplicates from you in exchange for books I shall mention your name in a lecture next week.3 Can you mention to me any clergymen who like Kirby have worked on insects, or like Brehm & Bechstein on Birds or in other branches of Zoology.4

Regardfully

Ferd von Mueller

 

How much more favorably Sydney is situated for communications with the islands, compared to Melbourne.

You might telegraph to me the names of Clergymen, as my lecture will be on the 6th of Aug.5

Surely ornithorrhynchus will now also be found in N. Guinea, which seems really the headquarter of the Monotremata6

What a pity I did not settle in Sydney.

1
Ramsay had begun to publish prolifically, mainly in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales; see list in 'Proceedings of the Linnean Society of NSW, by author', (URL: http://linneansocietynsw.org.au//////proceedings/proceedings_authors/Authors_R-S.html accessed 29 December 2017).
2
B75.11.01 etc.
3
M's lecture at the West Melbourne Presbyterian Church on 6 August 1877, subsequently published as B77.13.05.
4
M mentioned these names in B77.13.05, William Kirby on p. 24 and Pastor Brehm and John Matth. Bechstein on p. 25.
5
Telegram not found; but see M to E. Ramsay, 11 August 1877.
6
Ramsay (1877a) described a new species of echidna that he proposed to name after the collector, Rev. Lawes. In B77.13.05, p. 33, M used this discovery by Lawes as a contemporary example of a clergyman's contribution to science; he also speculated on the probable discovery of Ornithorrhynchus species in New Guinea.

Please cite as “FVM-77-07-30,” 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/77-07-30