24/3/82
In working up Euc. tesselaris1 for the 9th Decade of the Atlas,2 dear Mr Bailey, I like to turn to account brief notes on eleven Euc., concerning which the strenght of the timber has there been ascertained by our friend Mr Byerley. The kind, about which (by their vernacular name in the S. of Queensland I am left in doubt, are:
Red Ironbark-tree
Grey " "
Black " "
Rusty Gumtree
Bloodwood
Gumtop-Box tree.
Can you from your great local experience afford a clue to these. I suppose, there is no reasonable doubt about Flooded Gum tree (E. tereticornis) – Spotted Gumtree (E. maculata) and Thozet's Box tree (E. Raveretiana.3
Regardfully your
Ferd von Mueller.
Eucalyptus maculata
Eucalyptus Raveretiana
Eucalyptus tereticornis
Eucalyptus tesselaris
Eucalyptus tessellaris?
B83.13.07.
There is no closing bracket. M included details of Byerley's measurements on eight species of Eucalyptus, including the three for which botanical names are here given, in his discussion of E. tessellaris.
MS is the verso of a sheet used by M as a label for a specimen of Macrozamia macdonnellii (MEL 237355) collected at the Finke River, Central Australia by Hermann Kempe in 1882. This suggests that the letter may not have been sent, but M somehow obtained the information he was seeking; see n. 4 below.
Please cite as “FVM-82-03-24a,” 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