To Joseph Hooker¹    30 May 1885

30/5/85.

The byefollowing letter, dear Sir Joseph, explains the sending of the byefollowing skeletonized leaves. The Lady, who prepared them is the wife of one of our medical practitioners here, Dr Lewellin, and mother of an accomplished family, one of her sons being the principal resident Medical Officer of the Melbourne general Hospital. She has read of Sir John Lubbocks researches on leaves, and thinks the byefollowing specimens will interest that distinguished Baronet.²

You may remember that in the Eucalyptography with E. ptychocarpa I gave sections of the leaves of four species, so that the layers of cells might be noticed, the number of layers being comparatively definite, and stand probably in relation to the separation of the leaves in layers by the skeletonizing process.³ It may also be worthy of Sir John Lubbock's notice, that Mrs Lewellin found while macerating many kinds of leaves for artistic work of former exhibitions, that Eucalyptus leaves in decay produce no bad odor, which results almost from all other foliage when soaked for skeleton-leaves. This shows the futility of M Riviere's recent attempts (in the Bulletin de la Societe nationale d'acclimatation de France)⁴ to demonstrate that Bamboos are as good to subdue Malaria as Eucalypts! Certainly at a gutter along my poor office-place I have placed Arundo Donax to soak up stagnant foul water, there being no space to plant Eucalypts, but while the Bamboos and Reads⁵ simply lay dry a shallow place of humidity their leaves have not the antiseptic properties of myrtaceous foliage dependent on the volatile oil, as also shown by Sir Joseph Lister in surgical treatments. Besides Eucalypts soak up moisture as quickly as Willows, Poplars, Bamboos, &c, &c. Perhaps all these observations may interest the worthy President of the Linnean Society while engaged in his present study of leaves.

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller

with

Eucalyptus ptychocarpa

Arundo Donax