To James Hector1    24 May 1882

24/5/82

 

Will you do me the favor, dear Dr Hector, to support the Candidature of the Rev. Jul. Ten. Woods at the R. S.2 of England by your signature, and kindly send on the paper to Dr von Haast?3

It is very kind of you to say, that you will interest yourself about a reissue of my volume on "select plants" in N.Z., where such a work ought to be of great value to new settlers & other colonist.4 The publication ought not to interfere with any others there, that may be contemplated, as my work is one of wide general scope and cosmopolitan tendencies

Regardfully your

Ferd von Mueller

 

I believe you & Haast are the only FRS in NZ. Is it so?5

1
MS annotation: 'For Dr v. Haast'.
2
Royal Society.
3
Hector and Haast both signed Woods' nomination certificate, as did M, Robert Ellery, Frederick McCoy, Sir Henry Barkly and two British-based palaeontologists, Thomas Davidson and Henry Woodward. Woods was a candidate in 1883, 1884 and 1886-8, but was never elected. See also B. Scortechini to M, 8 December 1881; M to J. Hooker, 24 July 1882; and J. Hooker to M, 7 April 1885.
4
Letter not found. See M to J. Hector, 15 February 1882 (in this edition as 82-02-15b). Despite M's persistent prodding, no NZ edition of his Select extra-tropical plants was ever published. In 1884 John Armstrong, head gardener for the Christchurch Park and Domains Board, published an 8-page list (Armstrong [1884]) that was reviewed by the Melbourne Leader (8 March 1884, p. 13). The reviewer commented: 'The selection appears to be on the whole good, corresponding closely with the Select Plants of Baron Von Mueller, from which the lists appear to have been compiled, and, if so, without acknowledgment. … Though the list will doubtless be useful in New Zealand, it might have been more dignified on the part of the Government, and would certainly have been of more value to the colony to have imitated those of Victoria, Now South Wales, India and U.S. America in reprinting Baron Von Mueller's work on Select Plants.' See also M to J. von Haast, 7 March 1884.
5
There were three Fellows of the Royal Society based in New Zealand at the time, the third being the ornithologist William Buller, elected in 1879.

Please cite as “FVM-82-05-24,” 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 25 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/82-05-24