To Joseph Hooker   16 March 1881

16/3/81.

In reply to your kind letter of the 21 Jan.,¹ dear Sir Joseph, let me say, that the plates for the 7th & 8th decade of the Eucalyptography² are ready; but the extra duties for the exhibition³ have prevented me from writing out in full the text. I hope however, that these two parts will soon appear.

The census of the Acotyledoneae of all Australia⁴ gives me nearly 3000 species. Beyond the algae, you have laid the foundation to the Cryptogamy of Australia in the Flora of Tasmania.⁵

What heavy expense it has been to me, to send the wood articles to Mr Chanter,⁶ you will see from the accompanying account.⁷ Any technologic Museum would receive any of the articles with the greatest thanks, especially as the series forwarded contained no duplicates. So I feel sure that Kew could get in interchange for these sendings very much more, than the mere freight has cost, from any kindred institution. If the packing &c had not been done at my place, the expenditure would have been several £ higher. But enough of this.

I take this opportunity to tell you, that I have at last managed by abolishing the chemical branch (the mere remnant of it) in my place, to save so much money as to send out a collector again, and despatched him last month to North Queensland.⁸ I lately learnt, that Mr Walter Hill is also going there, in April, mainly to collect palms for you. So circumspect a person as Hill is sure to find out any more existing there, though I do not think, that very many more palms will be added to the Australian flora. This brings me to a solicitation; to allow me quietly to elaborate any other North-Queensland novelties, which Mr Hill & my collector are almost sure to discover simultaneously in the same or similar regions, except such plants as are wanted by special monographers at Kew. You have so many Treasures from Africa & South Asia and even America yet to elaborate at Kew, that you and your assistants can well afford to let me finish North-Queensland, especially as I gave up the whole alpine Flora of N. Zealand to you, a subject on which I had only this week a long conversation with Professor Von Haast, who is here to purchase articles for his Museum at the international Exhibition.⁹

I hope to proceed rapidly with the fragmenta, when the material from North Queensland comes in, and surely Mr Hill will let me have a set of his plants.

Had I not in such a senseless and cruel way been thrown out of my Garden, I should have had means for keeping a collector in the field & the flora of Queensland would have been more fully investigated by this time.

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller

I am fully aware from my long Directorial experience, that the majority of palms can not easily be transmoved and so many ferntrees

Acotyledoneae