2/5/82
It is a very late night-hour, dear Professor, & after a heavy days work I feel very tired; but as I shall be very busy in my department to morrow, I write at once a few lines in reply to your kind letter1 received this evening.
It would be best for you to send me a full series of your northern plants, the unicae to be returned; then the likelihood of your recording now and then a wrong sp. from the imperfect descriptions in the Flora would be avoided.
It seems Mr Tepper is apt to "rush into print";2 — I sent some notes to him regarding South Austr. plants during your absense, because some few additions and several rarities he found himself, and some were from my sister3 & a few other contributors. I thought he might make them known before I should forget; but I would suggest, that these fragmentory notes, read at successive meetings of your R.S., be held over, til more material accumulates in the course of the year, so that the various data do not get severed too much. Mr Tepper ought to leave the whole rearrangement of the notes to you, especially as in hurriedly writing I occasionally may have used names different to those of the Census of yours.4 Several additions will have to be recorded to the evascular Acotyledoneae. I will look to the mosses from the North more closely in a day or two. I got one species of Fissidens on the Vict. River.5
The proofsheet is for your private use only, as I do not intend to send any to Europe til the whole Choripetaleae are done.6
Regardfully your
Ferd. von Mueller.
The pale moss on Cycas from Douglas Peninsula7 is a Leucobryum.
Acotyledoneae
Choripetaleae
Cycas
Fissidens
Leucobryum
Letter not found.
Tepper had evidently incurred Tate's displeasure by submitting a paper to the Linnean Society of London based on an excursion led by Tate of which he was a part. He apparently included in it some information taken from M to O. Tepper, 20 January 1882 on the Tasmanian affinities of some plants from Kangaroo Island. He told Tate that he had written to withdrew temporarily the Linnean Society paper and apologised to Tate: 'I am very sorry to have done something opposed to your wishes or at least not approved by you & shall take care to be more careful in future, as I am most desirous to avoid even the appearance of interfering with another' (O. Tepper to R. Tate, 25 April 1882 (in this edition as M82-04-25, filed with this letter of M's to Tate). Tepper's paper was read to the Linnean Society on 7 December 1882 and published as Tepper (1884a). Tepper had earlier sought Tate's consent to his writing a paper for the Linnean Society 'about the places examined ... with a list of the plants noticed there & a description of all peculiarities noticed' (O. Tepper to R. Tate, 1 February 1882, also filed with the present letter), but had apparently then proceeded to write it without waiting for a reply; Tate had left for Darwin with a parliamentary delegation on 30 January 1882 (South Australian register, 31 January 1882, p. 6) and returned on 13 April (South Australian register, 14 April 1882, p. 6).
See, for example, M to R. Tate, 26 February 1882.
Tate (1880).
Victoria River, NT. This paragraph is marked with a line in the margin.
Proof sheets of B83.03.04; the Choripetaleae extend from p. 1 to p. 63.
NT, opposite Darwin.
Please cite as “FVM-82-05-02a,” 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