To Joseph Hooker   29 June 1881

29/6/81

 

So you are back, dear Sir Joseph, from your scientific pilgrimages to the genial clime of Italy, for which delightful travels you may well be enveyed with such a companion as Dr Asa Gray & your Ladies too!1 You will have escaped one portion of the northern winter at least.

I am glad, that the redflowered var. of Correa Lawrenciana still lives with you. It wants a large tub with the richest forest-soil, to give it a chance to expand into its almost tree-like dimensions. That it is such a large tall species in comparison to all others, must be the cause of its not yet having flowered already. At Arran2 at all events & in the channel Islands it would be hardy. At 5000' here it has to undergo ordeals of severe frosts and gets covered with snow for long periods.

Pilocarpin by its powerful action on the salivary glands & mucous membranes throws of the fungaceous false membrane in even late & severe stages of Diphtheria. A minute fractional quantity is injected hypodermically. Even in Germany, where the discovery was made, it seems too little known, considering how many a valuable life may be saved by the use of this alkaloid, the action of which is so rationally explained by former uses of the leaves in Brazil.3

Regardfully your

Ferd von Mueller.

 

The sons of the Prince of Wales are just arrived.4 Schomburgk, Moore & the Gardener here5 are or will be in attendance on their Royal Highnesses, but with me it is now painfully & undeservedly different to what it was when the Prince Alfred paid his visits to Australia.6 In all probability I shall not even have an opportunity to be introduced to the young Princes, though several of the Surgeons of the Escadre7 have kindly called on me on my poor little place where I live forlorn & do such office work as is possible still under the oppression towards me.8

1
J. Hooker and his wife toured Europe with Asa Gray and his wife in the spring of 1881 (Gray [1894], vol. 2, pp. 701-25).
2
The island of Arran, in the Firth of Clyde in Scotland, is warmed by the Gulf Stream.
3
See entry for Pilocarpus pinnatifolius in B80.13.07 and subsequent editions of Select extra-tropical plants.
4
Albert Victor Christian Edward, Duke of Clarence (1864-92), and George Frederick Ernest Albert (1865-1936), Duke of York (later King George V), were sent in 1879 by their father, Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) on a 3-year cruise of the Mediterranean and the British colonies in HMS Bacchante. The Princes visited Albany (WA), then Adelaide, Melbourne, Ballarat, Sydney and Brisbane; see DNB and also Dalton (1886). They arrived in Melbourne on 18 June 1881 (Argus, 20 June 1881).
5
William Guilfoyle.
6
When Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, visited Melbourne in 1867, M met him on more than one occasion and showed him around the Botanic Garden (Knight 1868).
7
squadron? HMS Bacchante was accompanied by HMS Cleopatra.
8
The sons … towards me is written on a separate sheet and may belong to another letter.

Please cite as “FVM-81-06-29,” 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/81-06-29