From Ferdinand von Mueller to Ralph Tate   1 Jan 1882

Newyear's morn,

1882

In first instance, dear Prof. Tate, let me offer my best felicitation to you at the commencement of the newyear. May it be to you and your family one of health, happiness and prosperity, and be free from sorrows and worry, so that at the end of it you can look back on the year with unmingled pleasure.

Next let me thank you for your and your kind Lady's invitation to your hospitable home, preparatory to a joint itineration to Kangaroo-Island.¹ I need not say, that I should be delighted to be your guest for a few days, and greatly enjoy rambles over scientifically untraversed grounds with you; but as a public Officer I am never sure, when and how long I may be able to leave my post; thus when I went the last time to W.A., I had to return much before the time, intended for my work there, as I was telegraphed for to join the Wattle-Bark Commission. If I know some weeks prior to your departure when next you will go to K.I., I may be able to make myself free to be your companion

The island being nearly as large as Creta,² will require several tours at different seasons to various localities from naturalists, before its vegetation, fauna & geologic condition can be placed on really scientific record exhaustively.

It escaped my notice, when you composed the Census of the S.A. plants,³ that Ottelia ovalifolia was omitted. I had it in my manuscript list of S.A. plants already in 1848,⁴ as I found it in several water holes in the Mt Barker-district. Possibly it may there have disappeared, as the drinking places gradually became so much invated⁵ by pastoral animals, not to speak of domestic taxes on the water supply by increased population, which must necessarily just as finally at the Thames destroy the aquatic plants. That Bentham did not record the Ottelia from S.A. is either an oversight, or he did not feel sure about the name of the locality recorded by me in its relation to one of the colonies. It is thus, that so many omissions of places of growth for numerous particular plants occur in the Flora, he absolutely refusing to record localities, unless he had seen specimens therefrom; otherwise my copious manuscripts, sent to Kew from 1853 to 1857,⁶ would have added many to the habitats, and he would not have given solitary or few places of growth of plants, recorded in my manuscripts as widely distributed!

The whitish lichen with netty ramifications is Cladonia retipora, Floerke; the 2 other Cladonias I will examine some day soon.

Acacia = A. retinodes, so far as can be judged without flowers.

The Eucalyptus corynocalyx is correctly recognized by you; its extending to K.I. is of interest.

N. 4 a & b = E. santalifolia, F.v.M.

The narrow-leaved Euc. N. 5 is a spec., which I had before from K.I. I believe it to be a variety of E. angustissima, but it needs further study still It is difficult to say anything about Euc., without having ripe fruits, advanced buds and full blooms together.

The "wet heath" must have furnished to you interesting novelties, and I am glad, that you intend to examine similar ground near Encounter-Bay.⁷ I think you will have found Sprengelia incarnata there. Could not your hosts on K.I. be induced, to get good flowers, buds & ripe fruits of all the Eucalypts there?

N. 2 is not E. goniocalyx. I will compare it carefully after the English Mail with the various forms of allied Eucalypts, so also E. N. 3, of which however you got no flowers.⁸

With regardful remembrance

your

Ferd. von Mueller.

I hope you got the manuscr. of Calotis Kempei all right⁹

I noticed Ottelia also near the entrance of the Glenelg River within S.A. territory.

Bentham's new Ottelia is only a variety!¹⁰

Acacia retinodes

Calotis Kempei

Cladonia retipora

Eucalyptus angustissima

Eucalyptus corynocalyx

Eucalyptus goniocalyx

Eucalyptus santalifolia

Ottelia ovalifolia

Sprengelia incarnata