To Frederick Bailey   15 March 1878

15/3/78.

I like to ask from you several items of information, dear Mr Bailey, if at some leisure-hour you can oblige me. I wish much to know what all your tanners use of the various Q. L.¹ barks. Perhaps many Acacias have never been tried.²

Have you further any means of obtaining information on the geologic areas to which certain Eucalypts are restricted in Queensland?

I have recently made some additions to my "select plants" from the Queensland Exhib. Catalogue,³ which you fortunately revised. I am however not sure, whether with the means at your disposal you could safely identify all the species enumerated there. Thus I have the gravest doubts, that Pittosporum bicolor extends to your colony. I suppose, you saw specimens of Melal. styphelioides, the remarks about it in the Catalogue being highly interesting. Which other Melaleucas form trees with you in salt swamps? except M. Leucadendron.

It would be unfair towards to you, to expect, that every Eucalypt should be known to you there, when you have no authentic specimens to compare, and when you have only Bentham's writing about them, in which are many errors. Thus he confuses even the West Austral. Euc brachypoda (with simple axile umbels) with Euc microtheca, whose infloresc. is terminal & paniculate.⁴ Thus for the QL species the name microtheca must be restored. So he has made many other erro[rs]⁵ apt to mislead you. The true E brachypoda is merely a small-flower[ing]⁶ state of E. rudis, notwithstanding of both being placed 21 pages apart! This shows the necessity for the Atlas⁷ but the proposition made by Mr Bernays can not be carried out, as I have no fund to issue the Q. L. species here, though copies might afterwards be purchased in Q.L. The first outlay to draftsman & printer is the stumbling block.

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller

Acacia

Eucalyptus brachypoda

Eucalyptus microtheca

Eucalyptus rudis

Melaleuca Leucadendron

Melaleuca styphelioides

Pittosporum bicolor