To George Bentham   31 December 1883

Drysdale, near Port Phillip-Head,¹

Newyears eve, 1883.

Your kind but mournful letter,² dear Mr Bentham, reached me here on the coast, where I am since a few week to try, whether the pure sea air and the rural tranquillity will free me of a protracted bronchial inflammation; as both my parents died of Phthsis, I must look on my present severe illness with serious apprehension. — This I mention, that you see, how many months now I have been suffering, and thus had neither strength nor courage to write beyond what urgent official duties demanded from me. To give however a sign of life, I sen[t] you a paperknife of Siphonodon australis, thinking that the trifle might interest you, it being from a tree named by yourself.³ From the remnants of the Calcutta-Exhibition⁴ I also sent a paper-knife to Prof. Owen, the article being from one of the Owenias, and in writing back,⁵ he kindly said (though I also sent no letter to that illustrious man), that he used it daily for cutting up new books, and that each time it came to him like a handshaking from me! —

I am deeply concerned to hear of your failing strength! — We all have been for these many years so accustomed to see you make uninterrupted and gigantic strides for the elaboration of the systema of plants of the world that I at the far distance can least of all realize that you have discontinued to advance the knowledge of the vegetable empire; and altho' you seem to have such gloomy forebodings, I still hope, that you after your overexertions of late years will rally, and will give the world some further litterary treasures. Prof Chevreul in Paris is now, I think, 96 years of age; and if he does perhaps no longer deliver a course of lecture at the University, he certainly did so still 2 or 3 years ago. Humboldt worked also on til 90. So I hope you will be cheered again!⁶ What you say of your long and illustrious career reminds me, that your name first became very familiar to me, when I cultivated in my widow-mothers garden a little plot, on which I raised some of the beautiful Polemoniaceous annuals named and described by you,⁷ plants which will ever hold their own in the horticulture of ordinary people and among them for all times commemorate your name!

Your attention was so absorbed in the "genera plantarum"⁸ for the last few years, that I did not even wish to disturb you by sending the trifling prints, on additions to the Australian Flora. In 1883 the additional species from all parts of Australia obtained as the aggregate from numerous correspondents amounts to only 40 species. So the flora of Australia may be regarded as specifically almost completed. altho' many observations on the plants established, and so exhaustively detailed by you, will have to be made for centuries to come. Even this day I had to correspond⁹ on your Acacia implexa as the most important tan-yielding tree in one part of New England.

This is the last letter I write in the byegone year! May the new one to you be one of serenity and joyous contemplation of what you have done for all times to benefit the world, should providence even not allow you to resume actively your great labors.

Ferd. von Mueller

Acacia implexa

Owenia

Siphonodon australis