Private
Sunday1
Would it be desirable, dear Mr Macdonald, you to ask Sir Edw Strickland or the Hon. Secr of the R.G.S.2 in Sydney, whether no Zoological specimens from Capt Everill's expedition were to come to the share of the Melbourne Museum. Surely there must be a multitude of duplicates, and many must by this time be named.
According to the recent Newspaper notice, none of the specimens, recently arriving here, came from the Fly- & Strickland River Expedition.3 So soon, as the volume on Vict. plants is out,4 (I hope in July,) the researches on the plants of the two Expeditions (under the auspices of the RGS. of Austr.)5 will be resumed, when Sydney and Brisbane will get further sendings, as yet only one sending having been made to either place by me.
Regardfully your
Ferd von Mueller
Letter dated to the Sunday after a letter was published from F. McCoy to the Editor of the Age, dated 16 June and stating that he had received two boxes of specimens from the Forbes expedition to New Guinea, but not mentioning the 1885 expedition under H. C. Everill, sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia (Age, 17 June 1887, p. 7). McCoy later issued a correction, saying that on 16 July 1887 Macdonald told him that the specimens were not from the Forbes expedition, but had come from Everill's collections (Age, 22 July 1887, p. 7).
Royal Geographical Society [of Australasia].
i.e. Everill's expedition, see n. 1.
M clearly hoped that the second volume (i.e. Part I) of his Key was near to publication; he had earlier told William Thiselton-Dyer that he expected to 'have to hurry part I of the "Key" through the press' (M to W. Thiselton-Dyer, 10 April 1887 (in this edition as 87-14-10a)). In the event, it was not issued until late the following year, as B88.11.02.
The expedition led by Everill, and the later expedition under H. O. Forbes to which the Society also contributed.
Please cite as “FVM-87-06-19,” 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