To John Forrest1    11 September 1879

11/9/79.

 

By the P. & O. Steamer2 I have just received the W.A. forest-report,3 dear friend, my booksellers (Dulau & Co in London) having bought five copies for me, for which they had to pay to Reeve's firm £3.8, besides cost of transmission; three of these copies have gone to Italy, France & Prussia. The price is enormously high, especially as you said your Council had voted £300 for the issue of this publication and as I furnished manuscript and drawings gratis! With exception of the shading in of some details of the anatomic plates the work is done well under Sir Joseph Hookers direction. This document ought to be sent to the Sydney Exhibition4 by your colony. I suppose, that you have plenty of copies supplied to your Government, if actually £300 was voted for this Report. If so, pray ask Mr Fraser, to send me at least a few,5 as I am too poor to purchase many, now particularly when for eleven years I am to pay off at the Building Society for my Cottage (for Office work only, not private dwelling) —

The Report ought to be a great help to the development of colonisation in W.A.6

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller.

 

If the main bulk of the copies is gone to Swan River, then I would like to write a dedicatory page to Sir Joseph Hooker, which (I suppose) could be printed in Perth & inserted yet in many of the copies. It would be an acknowledgment to Hooker.7

1
MS annotation: 'This letter is written to Mr J. Forrest'.
2
Peninsula and Orient Steam Navigation Company.
3
B79.13.10.
4
International Exhibition, Sydney, 1879-80.
5
The file includes a telegram from M. Fraser to J. Forrest, 24 November 1879: 'You may send baron von Mueller six copies of his report for private use & I will decide how many shall be sent to the Victorian Govt. when I come back' (Acc 527, 345/10); and another from Fraser to Forrest, 28 November 1879: 'You can send fifty copies of Muellers report on our forests to Colonial Secretarys Office & request Mr Eliot to forward them to Chief Secretary Victoria asking him to let the Baron have twenty five & further to enquire whether they wish any more copies' (Acc 527, 345/9).
6
MS annotation: 'The Baron expresses himself very modestly'.
7
This proposal appears not to have gone ahead. MS annotation: 'The Report was written for this Governments [an unknown amount of text missing]'. When M's report was later re-issued as part of a WA Government report (see B82.13.21), no dedication to Hooker was inserted.

Please cite as “FVM-79-09-11,” 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 19 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/79-09-11