Easter 1883.
I have to express my best thanks, dear Sir Charles, for your attentive kindness of sending me the volume of the brilliant orations, delivered by you as Head of the Sydney–University.1 I shall treasure this book as much for the erudite and elegant discourses perpetuated therein, as also on account of the generous feelings, which prompted you in offering this additional Souvenir.
Meanwhile you will have received a copy of the Census of Australian plant-species,2 in which at p. 94 you will see entered the Hoya, named in Honor of Lady Nicholson, and at p. 89 your Goodenia.3
I pleaded in a former letter the cause of Mr Samuel Davenport of Adelaide and of Dr Brownless of Melbourne as among the most deserving of Australians for honors from the British throne.4 As her Majesty’s Birthday is soon approaching again, perhaps their long services for Australia will receive on that occasion the generous consideration of the […].5 I have written on behalf of both to Sir Henry Barkly also.6
It is stated, that in Sydney Hydrophobia has broke out,7 of which dreadful disease we had hitherto only in Australia one isolated case at Hobarton.8 It would be a sad calamity, if the condition for that disease had arisen permanently in this part of the Globe now also.
Regardfully your
Ferd. von Mueller.
Goodenia
Hoya
Nicholson (1878?).
B83.03.04.
Hoya nicholsoniae, B66.10.01, p. 159; Goodenia nicholsonii, B59.12.01, p. 203, tab. iv. The plants were named, respectively, around the time of Nicholson’s marriage in 1865 and his creation as a Baronet in 1859.
Letter not found.
One or more lines obscured where final page is tipped into volume.
Brownless was appointed C.M.G. in 1888 and K.C.M.G. on 2 January 1893 (ADB); Davenport was knighted in 1884 and in 1886 appointed K.C.M.G. The letters to Barkly to which M refers have not been found.
See Sydney morning herald, 24 February 1883, p. 25; Australian medical journal, 15 March 1883, p. 127.
In 1867. See Australian medical journal, vol. 12 (1867), pp. 166-84, and Saunders et al. (1995), p. 43.
Letter tipped into p. iii of the library's copy of B83.03.04. In 1883, Easter fell on 25 March.
Please cite as “FVM-83-03-25a,” 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