To Alfred Cogniaux   2 December 1886

 

Let me express my grateful acknowledgement, dear Professor Cogniaux, for your kindness of attending so speedily to the various Cucurbitaceae, sent from here. It is pleasing to me, that you found some novelties among these plants, and it was very generous of you, to connect my name with one of the Australian and one of the Papuan novelties.1

As by the great pressure of engagements in my Department, I could not work much on New Guinean plants for several months, it may be some time, before I can issue an other part of the “Papuan plants”, — and I would beg of you therefore, to publish early the new species in some European periodical, before they become perhaps redescribed from some other collections in Europe.2

I was ill, when the collections were packed up; and now I see, that my manual assistant actually included the well known Cardiospermum among them. Of course I knew this genus well from bot Gardens as a student already, and I showed myself the presense of Cardiospermum in tropical Australia 1857, when I wrote the report on the plants of the Expedition for Sir Will Hooker’s Journal.3

Best thanks also for sending me your photogram, which has received a prominent place in the Album of pictures of illustrious friends.4 I will send early next year a lithogr. picture of myself for your kind acceptance.

Regardfully your

Ferd. Von Mueller.

 

Cardiospermum

Cucurbitaceae

Cogniaux published Alsomitra muelleri and Trichosanthes muelleri in Cogniaux (1887). He had evidently told M he intended to do so.
The next part of M’s Descriptive notes on Papuan plants was not published until May 1890 (B90.05.01). Cogniaux published the new Cucurbitaceae that M had sent him in Cogniaux (1887).
The report was 'communicated by the Colonial Office' to the Linnean Society, London, and was published in the Society’s Journal and proceedings (B58.05.01); see M to W. Hooker, 20 May 1857, and M to A. Gregory, 20 May 1857 (in this edition as 57-05-20a).
There is no picture of Cogniaux in M’s surviving photograph album.

Please cite as “FVM-86-12-02a,” 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 29 March 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/86-12-02a