To Odoardo Beccari   1 June 1878

1/6/78

It was very pleasing to me, dear Dr Beccari, to get your kind letter from Singapore, dated 19. April.1 Let me hope, that you will find your position in Florence amidst your riches & treasures, congenial to your tastes! What a path of glory have you before you! As regards Signor D’Albertis’s plants,2 I shall of course be grateful for any, which you can spare me.

I met D’Albertis here for two days, which was a source of great pleasure to me. He left a few living plants, which will likely come under my cognizance, when in flower.

Australia is almost exhausted, so far as new plants are concerned. Hence I must rely on New Guinea or some other part of the globe for novelties.

It is quite likely, that I mistook a Platea for a Lasianthera or Gomphandra, as I had not the benefit of using your excellent memoir on Olacineae, when I worked out the only Australian species as yet known. I will send you a specimen.3

Pray remember me kindly to the friendly Capt. D’Albertis,4 and give also my compliments to Dr Scheffer, from whom I have not heard for a very long time,5 though I believe, that he is in frequent communication with the Nurseryman at the bot. Garden.6

I like very much to obtain Bamboo-seeds of any kind in quantity fit for germination, and could send Eucalyptus seeds in exchange.

I am making grand efforts to restore my Directorship and to place the Gardener on the parks & Reserves.

With regardful remembrance, dear Dr Beccari,

your obliged

Ferd. von Mueller.

 

Eucalyptus

Gomphandra

Lasianthera

Olacineae

Platea

1
Letter not found.
2
Luigi Maria d’Albertis.
3
M did not publish a Platea: he had preciously described Gomphandra australiana in B67.07.05, p. 3, pointing out however that the absence of full material made it possible that it belonged to Lasianthera. In B76.12.03, p. 53, he identified a specimen collected by Luigi Maria D'Albertis at the Fly River in Papua as Miquel's Lasianthera litoralis, but Beccari (1877, p. 257) declared it to be a new species of Platea that he named P. papuana.
4
Luigi Maria d'Albertis was travelling from Sydney to London and visited M during the period the SS Garonne was in Melbourne— from 7 May, until it 'cleared out' on 10 May (Argus, 8 May 1878, p. 4; 11 May 1878, p. 6).
5
R. Scheffer to M, .25 October 1877.
6
William Guilfoyle.

Please cite as “FVM-78-06-01a,” 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 23 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/78-06-01a