5/8/84
Allow me to mention, dear Mr Fitzgibbon, that I am since three months confined by pulmonary sufferings to my room under the hospitable roof of Dr Büttner in Victoria-Parade,1 where I have been doing my office-work for some month. You may be aware, that a severe cough from which I suffered last spring, became not subdued in the summer though I went to the coast and subsequently to some forest-region of Gippsland. I am now somewhat better, but shall not venture to go out again, til real spring-warmth sets in anew
Will you be so friendly, with your usual generosity to excuse to his Worship the Mayor and to the Mayoress any apparent but not real shortcoming of mine, not having been able to call.
During one of the intervals of my return to Melbourne last summer I called at the town-hall, to wait on the Mayor to bring his Worship a copy of my volume on "select industrial plants,"2 which — so far as my recollection carries me, — I left, not finding the Mayor at the town-hall at the time. I brought the copy particularly as a mark of respect to the Chief-Citizen. The Committee of the Humane Society kindly invited me again last week to a seat on the platform; but neither at that occasion nor even at the leveé3 I could attend, for reasons above stated.
Trusting that you and your florishing family are quite well, I remain regardfully your
Ferd. von Mueller.
Please cite as “FVM-84-08-05,” 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