Sydney 19 Feby 1880
My dear Baron
I venture on your kindness to ask you to name the enclosed. It is said to be highly poisonous to cattle, and to grow on high ridges in the Clarence & Richmond districts.+1 Have you any previous knowledge of its dangerous properties? I have another favour to ask you, which is: that I have to give to our R. Society an address2 in which I wish to show the progress botanical science has made during the past year, and any new fact connected with this subject will be not only interesting but most useful to me. I wish particularly to bring before the public your own labours in this branch of science. I shall also be glad of any new facts relative to other scientific discoveries so that it may be embodied in the address. I know you to be well posted up on all such matters & I hope you will not deny me the information required. I am getting my new Museum and Library3 put into something like order and have engaged a young German — a Mr Webber4 — to look after it. He is a quiet unassuming young man, well educated & I think fond of Natural History & will make periodical journeys to various parts of the country for the purpose of collecting. I am very willing that he should prove useful to you i.e. by getting for you any particular [...]5
Probably indicating an insertion, added on the part of the letter now missing. Clarence and Richmond Rivers, NSW.
Moore (1880).
'The old Barracks, in which were the office, herbarium, library, and quarters for employees, … were pulled down in 1878, and new buildings of a substantial character erected instead.' See Gilbert (1986) p. 105.
The Sydney Herbarium ha no record of a person with this name so it would seem that, despite Moore's hopes, he did not stay for very long.
An unknown amount of text missing.
Author identified by comparison of the handwriting with that of another Moore letter. MS found with a specimen of Desmodium sp. (MEL 1559214).
Please cite as “FVM-80-02-19,” 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