Govt. House
Fiji
Dear Baron Von Mueller.
Thanks for your very welcome note1 and the seed accompanying it. The latter were planted at once and some of them — notably the interesting, and to me new, Madagascar ground nut — have already germinated & are well above ground
I shall not fail to send you a photo of the Musa you require. In a former note2 I mentioned [that] a disease had attacked this family of plants — principally M. cavendishii but my M. uranoscopa3 have also suffered.
I will also send you photos of the male and female Cycad you so kindly described for me many years ago4
I am applying photography to my very humble botanical pursuit and find it most useful. The process I adopt is the "Bromide" which is comparatively permanent.
With kind regards
very faithfully yours
John B. Thurston.
Musa Cavendishii
Musa uranoscopa
Letter not found.
See J. Thurston to M, 2 April 1886, which provides the basis for accepting the tentative dating of the present letter to later in 1886, Thurston seeming to imply that M had not yet responded to the earlier note.
M. uranoscopus?
See J. Thurston to M, 2 October 1882. Based on Thurston's specimens, M provided in B82.08.02 (republished as B83.07.02) a more complete description of Cycas seemanii than that given by Braun (1876a), p. 114 when he named it.
MS letter head: 'ESSE QUAM VIDERI' [To be rather than to seem].
Please cite as “FVM-86-00-00,” 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