To Joseph Hooker   21 October 1884

21/10/84

Dear Sir Joseph

Let me acknowledge with best expressions of thanks your kind sentiments conveyed in your letters of 15. & 31. Aug.;1 also accept my thanks for the information conveyed. It is good, that your health is firm, so that you can carry on your glorious work uninterruptedly. Can we hope for a supplemental volume of the “genera”?2

I know the real Dendrobium macrophyllum as well from A. Rich. plate, as from a cultivated specimen, and believe D Gordoni quite distinct from it. One of my best dreams or visions, to get first the high-land-plants of New Guinea, will not likely be realized, since Mr Forbes3 takes the field. To you there it might seem, that I ought to have gone myself; but matters became so complicated here, when the Department was broke up, and so much intrusion takes place on my little remaining province or is likely to take place, that I could not trust myself away, for any lengthened period and neither my public nor private means admitted, to send a party equipped or even a good collector purposely, who single-handed could not accomplish much. Perhaps Mr Forbes will let me have some orders of plants for elaboration; and with this view I have offered him through the Missionaries of Port Moresby a monetary subsidy.

Regardfully ever your

Ferd. von Mueller

 

Could Clethra be transferred to Saxifragea?4

When at Dr Buettners House I could only take a very small number of books with me for reference5

 

Clethra

Saxifragea

Dendrobium macrophyllum

Dendrobium Gordoni

1
See J. Hooker to M, 15 August 1884 (in this edition as 84-08-15b) and 31 August 1884 (in this edition as 84-08-31a).
2
Bentham & Hooker (1862-83).
3
Henry Ogg Forbes.
4
Saxifraga? or Saxifrageae?
5
M had been living at Buettner’s house while he was ill, before he went on a collecting trip to the west of Victoria; see M to J Hooker, 8 September 1884.

Please cite as “FVM-84-10-21b,” 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 8 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/84-10-21b