To Alphonse de Candolle   9 April 1882

Easter 1882.¹

A question of some interest has arisen, dear and honored Sir regarding which through your illustrious parent's cooperation with Lamarck you probably can give the best information. It concerns the priority of the genus Vahea. In my "select plants" (Calcutta-Edition and Sydney-Edition)² I reduced Landolphia to Vahea, also in my extended English Edition of Wittsteins organic constitution of plants.³ Mr Dyer has written to me,⁴ that he prefers to merge Vahea into Landolphia for his new publication on Caoutchoucs. We have discussed the question in several letters,⁵ but to settle it, the necessity arises to trace out, whether the plate of Vahea, as quoted by yourself in the prodromus⁶ (VIII, 327) did appear in a distinct livraison with a distinct date; in such a case, according to your code of nomenclature, the plate of the "illustration" would be of full authority, though the publication of the same plate in the "Dictionnaire" had to stand over til 1817. I possess the latter work, but not the "illustration".⁷ — That Lamarck's plate was engraved long before Palisot had his plate done, is clear enough, and morally speaking there can be no doubt about the priority of Vahea, but, as assumed by B. & H. in their genera, legally Landolphia may perhaps claim primogeniture, simply because it may have been the first to appear in full dress before the world.⁸ It would be well if the actual dates of issue of the second vol. of the "illustration" could be settled, as [now] has been done with Rees's cyclopaedia

By this post I send you for your friendly acceptance the 8th Decade of the Eucalyptography,⁹ and as the plates for the 9th & 10th are ready, and as my extraduties as Commissioner & Juror for the international Exhibition¹⁰ have ceased, I hope to issue soon also the two next parts.¹¹ There will not then be left much to be done in Eucalyptus, as Bentham & myself overrated the species from imperfect material 1866 in the Flora Australiensis.¹² The 11th vol. of the fragmenta is finished some time ago, but I shall have a bound copy for you only by next mail. I have enumerated in it over 3500 evascular Acotyledoneae.¹³

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller

The printing of a Census of species of Austr. plants with brief geographic notes¹⁴ is under the press.

After the Eucalyptographia is finished, I intend to publish a similar monography of Myoporinae¹⁵ of which I know about 60 firm spec. Have you a fragm. of Myoporum mucronulatum to spare.

Eucalyptus

Landolphia

Myoporum mucronulatum

Vahea