2/[3]/80.
In first instance, dear Professor Owen, let me thank you for your generous thoughts and wishes, bestowed on me in your letter of newyears day;1 and accept also my grateful recognition of your kindness of sending me your photogram,2 which shall receive a place of honor in the book of photographic cartes of illustrious friends. I am quite proud of this picture from your own hand, and that I am thus brought vis à vis to you. It is now too late to offer also to yourself a newyears-gratulation, but it is not too late perhaps to offer my felicitation to you for the new decennium. May you live throught it in unimpaired health and in that freshness of mind, which you still enjoy at your venerable age, and may you thus at the serene evening of a labourious life enjoy long the triumphs, which you gained so gloriously on the fields of science! — New measures are taken by me to secure more specimens of the monotrems & at last in the various stages of gestation. Dr Bennett & Sir Samuel Wilson are also trying to acquire the needful material for you; so I trust some one of us may at last be fully successful.
I feel also indebted for your information through Mr Waterhouse concerning the Dorthesia.3 Though in danger to be troublesome I venture to send now a minute hemipterous insect, which Mr Otto Tepper on St Vincents Gulf4 has found to produce saccharine secretions on Eucalypts. We are eager to have the exact identification with any described species through your kind mediation. It seems closely akin to a species, found by Mr Dobson near Hobarton,5 and of which he has given an account in the vol. of the R.S. of Tasmania of 1851.6 As yet I have been unsuccessful to trace positively the insect which produces the Melitose-Sugar on Euc. viminalis, according to Mr [A] Marshall probably a black Cercopis7 with white transparent spots, but some day I may venture to invoke the aid of your grand establishment to settle this from specimens to be submitted
Herewith I beg to send the commencement of a new number of the Fragmenta, in which a new Owenia is described.8 This particular additional congener is — unlike the others, — a mighty forest-tree, and its timber is so excellent, that it is largely brought into the market as similar to that of our famous Cedrela. My having established this meliaceous genus (of which possibly as in the case of Hearnia) yet members may be found in New Guinea, ought not to interfere with creating for you a grand generic monument in Zoology, as such might be named Owena or Owenea.
And now, honored and venerable Sir, let me remain with the wishes for your happiness your regardful
Ferd von Mueller.
The species of Eucalyptus, on which this Psylla-like Sugar Insect occurs, is my E. oleosa; on any of the other shrubby Mallee-Species it was not noticed, but "Lerp" again occurs on E. Gracilis only or chiefly, according to Mr Tepper. Another minute insect, occuring on E. oleosa, is sent herewith.9
Cedrela
Eucalyptus Gracilis
Eucalyptus oleosa
Eucalyptus Viminalis
Hearnia
Owenia
Please cite as “FVM-80-03-02,” 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 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/80-03-02