To Joseph Hooker   22 July 1880

22/7/80.

 

Australia is very poor in palms & bamboos, dear Sir Joseph,1 and where perhaps an odd one might yet be got, there the natives are savage & murderous, as poor Kennedy's disastrous expedition showed.2 I rather meet a lion in Central Africa than a Cannibal in N. E. Australia; fever is also quite alike bad at either part of the world. Still I keep my eyes on this region & will watch any safe opportunity to get something from there, though I have no high expectations, after Rockingham Bay district became extensively searched. I hope, you will not dissect the palm genera in the manner done by Scheffer, Wendland & Drude. Even Beccari is not conservative enough.3

With best regards

Ferd von Mueller

At this time Hooker was working on the palms for Bentham & Hooker (1862–83), published in Volume 3, part 3, in April 1883. He had asked M for assistance in enhancing the collection of Australian palms; see J. Hooker to M, 28 May 1880.
On his third expedition into northern Australia, in 1848, Edmund Kennedy was killed by Aborigines.
Scheffer decribed a number of palm species, but the most likely referencesare S cheffer ( 1873) or (1876); the other references are almost certainly to Wendland & Drude (1875) (see M to G. Bentham, 12 February 1877) and volume 1 of Beccari (1877-90), which is cited by M in B78.11.04, pp. 57-8, and is the only major work on palms published by Beccari before the date of this letter.

Please cite as “FVM-80-07-22a,” 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 28 March 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/80-07-22a