To Ellwood Cooper   12 June 1883

12/6/83.

 

You have placed me under further obligations, dear Capt. Cooper, by sending me an other supply of your works most liberally, for which gift I tender you my best thanks. Kindly tell me, which of my volumes,1 issued here, were received by you, so that I can complete the series in your library, and thus show myself practically grateful, especially as you do not wish to accept payment from me. Of course the copies will be used for literary interchanges only, and thus also your honored name be rendered known in still wider circles.2

As regards the insect, which causes such ravages there among the plants of the orange-tribe, I believe, that it does not extend to the Colony Victoria; at all events it has not come under my notice here. I will however follow up this important subject by enquiries among leading horticulturists in New South Wales; but as I have just risen from the sickbed, to complete this letter, — I having been in indifferent health for some time —, I could not possibly gain the requisite information by this mail; indeed, it may take some time, to obtain reliable data; the publications however, sent by you, will aid in this.3

Pray, give your excellent Lady my best regards. I will answer her kind letter4 by one of the next posts, and attend to her wishes in reference to ferns. I could send her a living stem, several feet high, of our hardies treefern, Dicksonia antarctica (better called D. Billardierii5), if Mrs Cooper has this superb plant not yet in her collection; it travels quite safely in a closed box as dead good, and so does the Giant-Todea, with large square stem; only let me know, whether you have them already there in culture. Should you wish, to renew your experiments with any of the Cinchonas for rearing in regions free of frost, I will glady6 send again fresh seeds.7 Many places in S. California ought to be adapted for these plants; but it would be necessary to keep the seedlings for the first 2 years under shelter merely in a Calico- or Brush–shade, and to plant them out at the beginning of the warm season, and place them in vallies, where sheltered by forests no cutting-cold winds can reach them, and where in summer humidity of air would exist. It would be an additional triumph to you, if you brought the first Californian Cinchona-bark into trade, as you have done so splendidly with the olive-oil. Let me hope, that your litigation-case will leave you in undisturbed possion of the little Eden, which you created there.

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller.

 
 

Cinchona

Dicksonia antarctica

Dicksonia Billardierii

Todea

1
volumes above works deleted.
2
Cooper had sent M a number of copies of his edition of M’s essays, i.e. Cooper (1876); see M to E. Cooper, 7 August 1883.
3
It is not known what publications were sent on the cottony-cushion scale, the scale that infected orange groves including Cooper's. There was extensive reporting in the Californian press on the increasing ravages of the insect, including articles with illustrations of the species concerned, Icerya purchasi ; for example, see an official report 'Scale insects on deciduous and ornamental trees', Pacific rural press (San Francisco), 28 October 1882, pp. 325-6.
4
Letter not found.
5
D. billardierei ?
6
gladly?
7
A batch of several hundred Cinchona seeds is filed with M’s letters. The seeds are labelled on a slip of paper annotated by M: ‘Cinchona 1883’.

Please cite as “FVM-83-06-12a,” 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 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/83-06-12a