To Bayley Balfour   4 June 1879

4/6/79

 

This day, dear Dr Balfour, I received already a copy of the new transactions of the Bot. Soc. of Edinburgh, in which your splendid paper on the Halophilas is contained.1 So I need not trouble you for sending me a copy of your valuable memoir, unless indeed you have a separate print for my own priv. library to spare. I see now, that the male flower of H. spinulosa (Ascherson) are also as yet unknown to you, and I must make once more efforts to obtain them. As MrBentham did not mention, that I placed H. spinulosa into Hydrocharideae, you seem to have remained unaware of the fact as you might not have had the particular vol. of the "fragmenta" at hand.2 I will proceed with the researches on this particular plant so soon as I get ♂ fl., and inform you of the result, begging of you at the same time to keep me posted up in anything that may be written by you on the subject, or anything else that may escape my notice here at so great a distance.

I hope you have not deemed me intrusive in sending you a few recommendatory lines for the successorship to your worthy & venerable fathers position; I feel sure you accepted them in the spirit in which they were offered.3

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller.

 

Kindly let me know, whether your father & yourself like the H. spinulosa dedicated to you as Balfouria, should the ♂ fl. prove it to be a well marked genus. Of course you will have seen in my letter, sent a week ago, that I abolished RBr's Balfouria long ago.4

 

Balfouria

Halophila spinulosa

Hydrocharideae

1
Balfour (1879).
2
Bentham (1863-78), vol. 7, p. 182, where he cites B74.08.01, p. 219, in which M considers Halophila to belong to Najadeae; he also places it there in B75.13.10, p. 91. No reference to a transfer to Hydrocharideae has been found in any issue of the Fragmenta, but the genus is treated as a member of Hydrocharideae in B82.03.04, p. 115, where the Fragmenta citation is B74.08.01, p. 219.
3
Letter not found.
4
Letter not found. See Bentham (1863-78), vol. 4, pp 316-7, where Bentham followed M's herbarium name transfer to Wrightia .. M did not erect another Balfouria.

Please cite as “FVM-79-06-04,” 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 25 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/79-06-04