10/8/80
In answer to your question, dear Sir Joseph, I would just mention, that I noted Batis as Halorageous in my "select plants"1; the Indian (enlarged edition) you will doubtless have got from Calcutta direct.2 It may be best to keep it as a distinct order, but it seems to me to have its best place at all events near Halorageae, especially as the development of albumen of the latter is so very variable and holds not good for distinction in most other orders[.] You seem to have over looked Grisebach’s notes in the Flora of Brit. West India, where he puts it with Salsolaceae, after Kunth.3
My Material on Palms is very scanty, but I will send you what I have. In North Queensland the palms (even there like Bamboos) not numerous) occur in fever-jungles beset by cannibals; indeed I rather meet a tiger or Naja4 in India or a lion in Africa, than savage bipeds in the forest-recesses of N. E. Australia. Travelling moreover is expensive here; but if the Exhibition-duties5 are over I am likely to go to N. Queensland for a few months, to study palms & other plants needing local elucidation.6 The financial depression affects us all here also now more than ever, and with increasing debts of the colony & alienation of crown land and unproductive buildings & exhaustion of mines the prospects are not cheering! especially in a Department like mine, which is ruined almost totally already.
Regardfully your
Ferd. von Mueller.7
I send once more 89 & 91 of the fragm.,8 as they contain notes on palms: Ptychosperma Normanbyi is stoloniferous. Kentia minor I have referred to Bacularia9 (Drude intends in justice to acknowledge Bacularia as Beccari also will henceforth), a genus sufficiently established before Wendland’s. The spikes of B. minor are intrafoliaceous, therefore those of a true Bacularia & this species (unlike B. monostachya) is stoloniferous also.
Bacularia minor
Bacularia monostachya
Batis
Halorageae
Kentia minor
Ptychosperma Normanbyi
Salsolaceae
B76.12.04, p. 31. See M to J. Hooker, 25 April 1880, and J. Hooker to M, 10 June 1880.
B80.13.07; see p. 43 and also systematic index added to this edition, on p. 372. In addition to supplying M with copies of B80.13.07 that he distributed from Melbourne (see for example, notes to M to W. Odgers, 17 April 1880, and M to E. Behm, 6 May 1880); there is also, in private hands, a presentation copy inscribed by M to David Gaunson dated May 1880. The Government of India also distributed copies within India and to other colonial administrations: for example, to Singapore and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) (register entries recording letters acknowledging receipt in British Library, Archives, India Office records IOR/P/1507 Agriculture and Horticulture, Part B, proceedings. p. 34) and Straits Settlements (National Archives of India, New Delhi, Home, Revenue and Agriculture Department, Part B, Agriculture and Horticulture Branch, proceedings, July 1880, nos 99-100).
Grisebach (1864), p. 61; probably Kunth (1822-5), vol. 1, p. 479.
over underlined; vertical line in margain and MS annotation by Hooker against looked … Brit West India : 'No! They contain nothing to note'.
The generic name of the Cobra.
M's duties in connection with the International Exhibition, Melbourne, 1880-1.
M never made the visit.
The postscript paragraph that follows is on a separate folio (286) that appears to belong with this letter.
B78.11.04; B80.02.02.
M described Kentia minor in B74.09.02, p. 235, but referred it to Bacularia minor in B78.11.04, p. 58. Drude ... henceforth is written in both margins, with positions indicated by asterisks.
MS annotation by Hooker: 'And Oct 1/80'.
Please cite as “FVM-80-08-10,” 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