To William Thiselton-Dyer   26 July 1886

26/[7]/86¹

A day after I despatched to you my last letter, dear Mr Dyer,² I received from Dr Beccari the concluding part of the second & the commencing part of the third volume of his admirable “Malesia”.³ In the newest of the two, both now received together, I see an elucidation of Papuan Ferns!⁴ This is the first notice, I have of this undertaking; and I can now better understand, why your zealous pteridologist⁵ was so sorry, that he did not get, what went to Prof. Luerssen. Had he or you only said a word to me in any letter of this task when he was engaging on it, I could have easily induced Prof Luerssen, to hand temporarely over to Mr Baker what I sent him, though very little additionally would have been gained thereby. Moreover as to me here, being comparatively near to New Guinea, variously collections would and do come from time to time, I could have sent my own Papuan ferns on loan for Mr Bakers essays, as I did with my Australian Normal-collections for Mr Bentham during 17 years, and Mr Baker could then have kept, what he wanted particularly for Kew. But really how am I to know this? as neither he nor Beccari told me, and I did not see any public notice about this forthcoming review of the Papuan ferns at Kew in any journals, that came before me. I am not surprised, that Mr Baker made some alterations in Cesati’s and my naming of N.G. ferns, as he and I may have had before us inaccurately named Indian specimens for comparison, and to these we both may have trusted too implicitly. In a few cases I do however not concur in Mr Bakers views as now expressed, the generic limitations being left out of account, as he would like of course, to adhere to Sir W. Hooker’s great “spec. filicum”;⁶ but I would like to instance exempli casua one case for his reconsideration; and this he will sure to grant with his usual amiability and candor, all the more as he never saw any Schizaeas growing in their native countries! Now how could S. Forsteri and S. dichotoma be united! - Both Sprengel and Willdenow already marked out S. Forsteri so clearly, although the latter arbitrar[e]ly set aside the former’s name. Let Mr Baker refer to my appendage of Campbells New Hebrides, where I referred specially to the distinctness of S. Forsteri.⁷ That is a strictly tropical species, while S. dichotoma comes far down to extra-tropical latitudes with S. fistulosa. Indeed S. Forsteri forms a transit to the section Actinostachys, and should therefore be placed at the end of the Section Lophidium. If once the differences between S. Forsteri and S. dichotoma are well appreciated by any one, he then can sort out the specimens at a glance.⁸ I am further still of opinion as reexpressed in my Census,⁹ that there is no specific difference whatever between S. dichotoma and S. bifida, at least so far as Australian material shows. Close to me at Pt. Phillip in the sandy heath-ground the two can be traced into each other; and there must be transitory specimens between those I sent by me¹⁰ to Kew. But we have no approach to S. Forsteri on the heaths close to Melbourne; indeed the latter is in Austr. only known from Queensland, and is there very rare. I have not Sprengel’s Anleitungen;¹¹ but Willdenow perhaps from Sprengel) has given a synonymy,¹² which probably is quite correct; you can easily verify this at Kew from Schrader’s journal¹³ (Bernhardi’s figure), which I have not in my library. If Mr Baker still thinks, that S. Forsteri and S. dichotoma are the same, but S. bifida not, then I will enter once more on this investigation, though the matter was largely cleared up in the beginning of the century; and for such renewed investigation I shall have now ampler material, not only through Sonder’s large collection,¹⁴ but also through the great augmentations of my own since I formerly wrote on the subject.¹⁵ I have now also S. Forsteri from New Guinea.

Regardfully your

Ferd von Mueller.

It is a pity that Campbell’s New Hebrides” has been so much overlooked. It was there, that Lysimachia decurrens¹⁶ was restored. This elaboration by Mr Baker of Papuan ferns has suddenly and quite unexpectedly made me aware of an utterly unintentional shortcoming of mine. It is this. I now only find, that my late friend Cesati worked out Beccari’s New Guinea ferns, and published the results in Febr 1877, while my examination of D’Albertis ferns was published in Dec 1876[.]¹⁷ Now in looking up the litterature I wrote, that I have from Cesati himself a copy of the essay, but as the title says “Polinesia”¹⁸ I did not look for New Guinea ferns, and it must have come when in 1877 I was at Shark-Bay overland from the S. of W.A. and soon after my return my long illness commenced, and then I moved into new quarters, and then came the endless work for the great Exhibition here of 1880, so that Cesati’s researches were lost sight off - I will explain this in the next part of “Papuan plants”¹⁹

I shall be much interested in your and Mr Baker’s answer to this letter.²⁰

I gave full diagnoses of the 3 Lygodiums of Australia already in 1870 (fragm VII, 83-84),²¹ though they are not quoted by Bentham by a very pardonable oversight; I then already clearly identified them with L. Japonicum, L scandens & L. reticulatum; - therefore L. Japonicum was well known to me, and if it was wrongly named in D’Albertis collection then the labels must have been mixed, or two occurred on one sheet. See Papuan plants p. 75.²² The examination was conscientiously done.

Linné did not establish the genus Lygodium, nor did Zollinger name Psilotum complanatum.

Have you in Kew Museum a flower leaf and fruit of the Madagascar Adansonia to spare?²³

Lophidium

Lygodium Japonicum

Lygodium reticulatum

Lygodium scandens

Lysimachia decurrens

Psilotum complanatum

Schizaea bifidi

Schizaea dichotoma

Schizaea fistulosa

Schizaea Forsteri