To Joseph Hooker   23 March 1881

23/3/81.

 

I was greatly pleased, dear Sir Joseph, to see the beautiful plate of Milletia megasperma in your Magazine,1 just arrived. It reminds me of happier former days, when some little means were at my disposal for botanic exploration and horticultural gatherings, & when I could serve also Kew in the augmentation of its living treasures. It makes me quite sad, to look back to the former and earlier years of my carier.2 My collector3 has sent the first lot of his plants from North Queensland; if he gets seeds of any species, fit for the conservatories of Kew, you shall have them at once. I hope you will allow me to finish the N. Queensland-flora, as you & your assistants have more treasures at Kew, than you can elaborate, and as in Australia now only N. Queensl. is yet yielding any notable additions. I hope, that Mr Hill will send me a set of his dried plants also. Of course, if any monographer at Kew wants plants, and as you go on with the genera,4 you will have to take notice of any additions, that Hill may furnish.

I wish you could have succeeded in flowering your fathers Correa Lawrenciana in its red variety, which I only once found (subalpine under Mt. Cosciusko) It is a most superb plant & would be hardy with you.

Are you aware of the magic effect of Pilocarpia in Diphtheria?, throwing off the false membrane and parasitic film.5

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller

 

I have just found out that the cause of the deterioration of the drinking water of Melbourne is Spirillum volutans.6

Poor Ramel died in December. Kindly see what I said about him in the Eucalyptography under E. globulus7

Have you received the new edition of the select plants8 from Sydney?

 

Correa Lawrenciana

Eucalyptus globulus

Milletia megasperma

Spirillum volutans

 
1

Curtis's botanical magazine, vol. 107 (1881), t. 6541 (1 February 1881).

‘closely allied to Wistaria … collected at many places in Queensland, and in the northern parts of New South Wales, and was first described by Baron von Mueller, to whom the Royal Gardens are indebted for its introduction … flowered in August of last year … JDH.’

2
career?
3
Karsten. There are almost 100 specimens listed in the National Herbarium of Victoria collection in the Australian Virtual Herbarium database [accessed 5 March 2014] as collected by Karsten in February 1881 in and around Cairns.
4
Bentham & Hooker (1862-83).
5
The probable source of M’s information is the Pharmaceutical journal, which carried articles on the extraction of this drug between 1875 and 1881, it being described as ‘ one of the most certain and powerful diaphoretics known in materia medica’ (Pharm. j., vol. 10 [1879-80], p. 215).
6
M, together with A. Rampant, chief engineer of the French Government in Saigon, collected water samples from the Yan Yean reservoir on 19 March 1881 (Argus, 21 March 1881, p. 5, col. b). M reported finding Spirillum and recommended planting the banks of the reservoir (M to G. Langridge, 21 March 1881).
7
See B80.13.14, Decade 6.
8
B81.13.10.

Please cite as “FVM-81-03-23,” 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 30 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/81-03-23