To Ralph Tate   17 November 1883

17/11/83

 

Have found the Babbagias, dear Prof. Tate, and give you the localities now.1 The "Field Naturalists Club" will give a great impetus to research there.2

My cough has hardly diminished in severity, and keeps me to my rooms. Perhaps the hot weather will do me good, when it sets in.

Arrangements are now made by the Mines Department here, to have the fossil miocene leaves here drawn and engraved.3 If you have any well preserved spare-specimens, they could be done here under my supervision at the same time; I feel not convinced from the mere nervation, that any of our leaves were laurinaceous; they may and may not. At home, where laurinaceous fruits have occasionally been found with 3-nerved leaves, some clue is occasionally given by the consociation of leaves as to their generic position, even if fruits are not obtained; but this guidance can at present not to be trusted to here.

Cinnamomum is defined, as you know, by microscopic characteristics of flowers; therefore at best, even with fruits, we could not call any fossil a Cinnamomum, as here was done by McCoy4 and by others elsewhere

I hope, that you will have a very nice trip to Kang. Isl.5

Regardfully

your

Ferd. von Mueller6

 

My Census has been attacked by Hemsley of Kew in an unjust manner, and I shall take some opportunity to refute his view.7 The criticism by him was in the Gardeners Chronicle; it is brief and no real criticism. I was prepared for something of the kind and met it in the preface already to some extent

 

Babbagia

Cinnamomum

 
1
MS list of localities not found; but see localities given in B83.14.02, pp.108-9.
2
A Field Naturalists' Section was established within the Royal Society of SA by a resolution passed on 4 September 1883. Rules for the Section were adopted at a meeting of the Society on 2 October and Tate delivered an inaugural lecture in the first week of November.
3
No report by M on these specimens has been found.
4
McCoy (1874-82), vol. 4 (1876), pp. 31-2; pl. 40, figs 1-3, Cinnamomum polymorphoides. McCoy also illustrated as fig. 4 another leaf, described on p. 32 as Laurus werribeensis and also attributed to the Lauraceae.
5
Kangaroo Island, SA.
6
The paragraph that follows is on a separate, undated sheet and may not have been part of the same letter. However, given the date of publication of the issue of the Gardeners' chronicle to which M refers (see n. 7), he would have received his copy and seen Hemsley's criticism in mid-November 1883.
7
Gardeners' chronicle, 29 September 1883, pp. 390-1. Hemsley's criticism of M's Census (B83.03.04) was directed especially at (1) M's insistence on 'absolute priority in names—every other consideration being subordinated to mere priority', and (2) 'the extensive agglomeration of genera, which is quite in consonance with the author's ideas of the limits of species'. In his preface, M had suggested that phytographers would become 'quickly accustomed' to the name changes he had introduced on the basis of strict priority.

Please cite as “FVM-83-11-17a,” 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/83-11-17a