To Joseph Hooker   8 October 1881

8/10/81

The circumstance, dear Sir Joseph, that neither the Gardeners Chronicle nor any communication from Kew alludes to so sad an event as the loss of Bentham, awakens my hope, that the great systematist is spared us yet, and that Caruel's information, derived from Planchon, as very implicitly and with very emphatic expressions of sorrow communicated by letter to me,¹ is based on some mistake. Let me hope, that he will long live to be your collaborator and to enlarge our favorite science!² —

Poor Dr Cooke writes to me by last post, concerning his severe illness.³ I have advised him⁴ to take a seavoyage to a healthy part of Central-America, so as to give his mind perfect rest on the ocean, to enjoy the bracing fresh sea-air with its ozonous refreshing effect and to delight in rambles after fungs in the jungles of the tropics. It is so easy now, to reach any of the Central American countries, where a special mycologist never yet explored, that such a tour for some month would not only build up again his mental working power, but give him an opportunity of doing an immensity of research in a branch of science there, but scantily as yet carried on merely mechanically as a byework by collectors. What work could an experinced mycologist like Dr Cooke do during a few month in the virgin forests of America! —

Remember the vast material, gathered by Dr Ernst merely in Caracas. You are a Physician yourself, and will agree, that only by a plan like this so valuable a life as that of your Mycologic Officer can be much prolonged, relapses being after any early resumption of arduous study-work almost inavoidable. Of Dr Cooke's private affairs I know nothing, as it was only a year or two ago, when Berkeley at his venerable age referred me to Cooke. Like most real son's of science (unless they had property by inheritage) Cooke is probably poor & may have a family to support. If financial obstacles stand in the way I will pay £10 or £20 towards his expenses, for which help he might send some of his spare specimens obtained in Central America. Others of his scientific friends would doubtless do the same, and so a few hundred £ might be got together for him.

Central America could be cheaper & quicker reached, than any other great unexplored mycologic area, and he could operate safer there than anywhere (with equal prospects) in the East.

If the enormously rich brother in law of Dr Harvey⁵ had given that poor friend of ours a modest independence, so that as a private man he could have lived at the Cape of Good Hope, or in any other warm part of the globe, quietly engaged in his darling studies, I feel sure his life would have been spared for many years.

The same advise, which I give concerning Cooke, I proffert to my friend Professor Keferstein, the young promising Zoologist of Goettingen, a series of years ago, but it came too late.

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller.

I suppose you met our delegate, my friend Dr Ruddall at your Medical Congress⁶