To William Mitten   22 November 1881

22/11/[81]1

 

I was pleased, dear Mr Mitten, to hear from you by last mail and to learn, that you have kindly undertaken to complete & rearrange the list of Australian Mosses, which the lamented Dr Hampe had written just before his death. Your splendid “Musci Austro-Americani”2 are on my writing-table, as I consult this splendid enumeration of yours just now for an index of genera of all Australian plants, under the press for the R. S. of Sydney.3 Altho’ I shall have your valuable revision of the Australian Mosses not in time for that index, I shall be able to use it in my Census of all Australian species of plants, now about 12000, of which fully 3000 are cryptogams.4

Without wishing to raise a point of delicacy, I would say in allusion to a remark in your last letter, that I am most willing occasionally to afford such substantial support to your researches, as you may have had from Sir Joseph Hooker & others. If you could make a tour to Central Africa, the uplands, what wonders would you do for bryology!

A few mosses go to you by this mail, which may interest you for locality. These particular mosses have not gone to Dr Carl Mueller, and I will arrange, that also in future sendings not the same mosses go to you & him.

Will you afford me the pleasure of sending me your photographic card for the collection of card-pictures of scientific Correspondents, and will you accept my poor photogram? In a speech at the pharm. Soc. of Melbourne,

[…]5

Text obscured by folio number stamp. Dated on the basis of the content of the first paragraph: Hampe died in 1880; B82.02.04 was printed in January 1882 (M to W. Mitten,13 February 1882).
Mitten (1869).
B82.02.04.
B83.03.04. The projected second volume of the census on ‘Evasculares’ (p. vii) was never issued.
The letter ends at the end of the folio. An unknown amount of text is missing.

Please cite as “FVM-81-11-22b,” 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 29 March 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/81-11-22b