26/2/83.
In first instance, dear Mr Fraser, let me congratulate you to the Premiership of W. Australia, which you with your energy and experience in local requirements will hold with great advantage to the colony.1
Secondly let me thank you, for sending me a complete copy of the Report issued by you as Chairman of the Forrest-Commission.2 As now all sides of this great local question are elucidated, the document ought to be valuable there for present and future forest-arrangements. Accept my best acknowledgment for the graceful manner, in which you alluded to myself in this respect.
As regards your question, whether Pines would be recommendable for forest-culture on the coast & islands there, I can emphatically encourage you in fostering such an object, particularly as you have no native trees fit for masts, spars and many other purposes, for which Conifers are indespensible. Should you not have the last edition of my "select plants for industrial culture and naturalization",3 I would advise you, to ask your colleague in Sydney, the hon. the Colonial Secretary, for one or more copies, which the hon. Gentleman would send you for your patriotic purposes with the greatest readiness. In that volume (printed in 1881) I have marked all the best pines with asterisks. I only made a sending of pine-seeds lately again to the Italian Government for the sanitary plantations in the malarian districts of that Kingdom. So soon as you have completed some arrangements for Forest-nurseries, I will gladly procure fresh seeds of Himalaian, North American and European pines for your purposes also there. Sendings, sufficient for experiments, will be sent free. My last supplies went latterly to the Himalaian Kingdom.4
A few more copies of your complete report would be acceptable for distribution abroad in the interest of your colony.
It would be well, to reserve some of your islands for Forest-culture; I recommended the same as regards Kangaroo-Island for South-Australia, and Fraser's Island for Queensland.
If I can in any way promote any of the rural interests in your wide territory, it will be done with much pleasure.
Regardfully your
Ferd. von Mueller.
Please cite as “FVM-83-02-26,” 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/83-02-26