To William Thiselton-Dyer1    21 October 1886

21/10/86

 

Am extremely busy and not quite well, dear Mr Dyer, but do not like leaving your last letter unanswered. As it is intended to base on the Exhibition an Institute, to commemorate her Majesty's semi-secular jubilee, I could not urge the removal of the Todea; — but as stated in my last letter,2 the only remaining large one (so far as hitherto known), I will get dragged out in midsummer when oxen teams can get firm footing in the "gullies"; if then shipped it will arrive in your summer. Xanthorrhoeas I can send readily enough; but they can only be kept alive by giving them abundance of healthy food; otherwise they die off, when the nutriment in their stems ceases to be supplied, and so the Exhibition specimens may "go off" also after a while.3 As regards my poor "select plants" I have seemingly failed to make myself understood. How could I possible4 ask Kew "to review" this or any other work of mine? What I said was, that Kew had never in the slightest alluded to any of the five editions in the Engl. language, and that thus I was discouraged to send the last one, but that Sir Grah5 Berry could if you wanted one doubtless supply a copy of the last from the Vict. Agent General's Office, where for emigrants some are available.6

Regardfully

your

Ferd von Mueller

Todea

Xanthorrhoea

1
Date stamped Roy[al Gardens] Kew. Recd. 30 Nov. 8[6]; annotated in lead pencil And 30.11.86 [letter not found].
2
The immediately preceding letter to Thiselton-Dyer, 17 October 1886, is likely to have gone in the same London mail as this letter: see mail times advertised in the Argus, 14 October 1886, p. 1; M's reference is almost certainly to the postscript to M to W. Thiselton-Dyer, 2 October 1886 (in this edition as 86-10-02b).
3
There is a vertical blue line in the central margin of the back of the folio, between the passage 'the only … one' and 'alive ... nutriment' .
4
possibly?
5
Graham.
6
See M to W. Thiselton-Dyer, 21 July 1886 (in this edition as 86-07-21a). The reference is to B85.12.03 and earlier editions.

Please cite as “FVM-86-10-21a,” 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 25 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/86-10-21a