To Joseph Hooker¹    29 May 1882

29/5/82

This is not the Governm. mail, dear Sir Joseph, but the private line, which alternates with the Peninsular mail weekly; hence I shall send not much til next week, but like to say at once, that 4 of the 5 cases with dried plants came from Kew a few days ago, and the fifth is likely to get into my hands this week from the ship & customs.² The contents, with the exception of the upper stratum in two cases, which got damp, arrived in excellent order. It is a most important addition to our collections here, for which boon I am thoroughly grateful & shall try to reciprocate.³ I send by this post a copy bound of the XI vol. of the fragmenta;⁴ it was long in the binding branch of our Gov. Printing Department.⁵ That establishment is much taxed by the ordinary routine-work and the engagements for parliament; and now—, to add to the difficulty—a large portion of the building burnt down! Fortunately the ready plates for the 9th & 10th Decade of the Eucalyptography⁶ are save, and I lost no books (copies of my works) still in store there for me. I got also after 1½ years at last the extraprints of my opening adress delivered in the rural section of the Melb. Social Science congress,⁷ while meanwhile the volume (800 pages) has been burnt! Passingly I may remarck, that it was with reluctance, that I accepted any work for the Congress, not only because it encroached on my time (and I am no longer young), but also it was so anomalous to ask me to work on the Council & to open the section including horticulture, when for nearly 9 years (then more than 7 years) I had not been in any garden! I could have taken a more leading position in the congress, if I had liked it. Still,—just as at the international Exhibition,⁸ I have done what under such oppressed circumstances of mine I could fairly do. Do read, what I said in the adress, and the kind Mr Dyer will perhaps do me the same honor.

I have been forced to publish in local journals here anything, that wanted issue lately, because the Gov Printer can give so little of his resources to my special work; but I have to support by a subsidy out of my private means our "Social⁹ Science Record". it is very inconvenient, to refer to such scattered notes in future, I must try to fuse the diagnoses into latin hereafter for new numbers of the fragmenta.¹⁰ The Gov. has recently allowed me (my present Ministerial Chief, Mr Grant) to get a census of the plant-species of Australia printed at a private establishment.¹¹ This new publication will facilitate the use of Bentham's flora Australiensis and more especially will aid reference to the eleven volumes of the fragmenta. The printing of the Thalamiflorae (including Amyliferae) is nearly done, and I shall have the Dicotyledoneae through the press by the end of this year, and the rest in 1883, if not unforseen hindrances arise. This commentary ought to be useful for Australia in a similar way, as Nyman's Sylloge¹² serves the whole of European Flora.

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller

I recently got Eichler's Syllabus,¹³ new edition, but cannot befriend myself with many of his arrangements.

Amyliferae

Dicotyledoneae

Thalamiflorae