To Miles Berkeley   8 October 1881

8/10/81.

 

By last mail, rev & venerable friend, I had a few lines from poor Dr Cooke,1 in which he apprizes me of his sad illness. His ailings having culminated in a paralytic stroke, it is clear, that so valuable a life as his can only be rendered safe by a long absense from room-work; I have therefore begged of Sir Joseph Hooker, who as a physician must see the seriousness of the case, to allow Dr Cooke furloug & support, to proceed on a mycologic voyage to Central America, of course selecting a salubrious high mountain terrain for his operations.2

Dr Cooke by his personal presense would do wonders there, would be for months in the free gods world and enjoy the ozonous recuperative influence of the sea air on the passage to & from. Like myself no doubt others would give some monetary support to such a mission, if that was required. Will you kindly support my disinterested supplication to Sir Joseph?

And now, an other favor. On your own request I have forwarded the continuations of my mycologic collections within the last two years to Dr Cooke. As it must necessarily be some while before he quietly & regularly can set to work again, I would ask, whether you would spare occasionally a little of your time, to look over such of my fungs, as are left unexamined by Dr Cooke. If you would kindly do that, the material would not accumulate so as to grow meanwhile over our heads. You would at a glance pick out any genus of the newer collection & by a few masterly touches of yours bring them under notice.3

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller.

1
Letter not found.
2
See M to J. Hooker, 8 and 20 October 1881.
3
Cooke advised Berkeley ‘do not trouble yourself with Australian fungi — they are so very wretchedly preserved that it will be labour in vain. If you forward them to me I will send them to Kalchbrenner who has now some 200 being examined from Müller — but not 10 per cent of them can be named. I have now a collection of not less than 250 specimens of Hymenomycetes — other than Agarics — which are being determined for Baron Mueller — but he has no idea of instructing his correspondents how to save labour in determination. It is folly to send some to you and some to me because, if anything is new it may easily be in both parcels and give double trouble.’ (M. Cooke to M. Berkeley, 7 December 1881; Natural History Museum, London, Botany Library, Berkeley correspondence, vol. 4). In this letter Cooke also states that microscope work and long periods of writing causes him trouble.

Please cite as “FVM-81-10-08a,” 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 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/81-10-08a