To William Thiselton-Dyer   19 October 1887

19/10/871

 

Herewith, dear Mr Dyer, a Selaginella,2 from Cuthbertson’s expedition,3 which enterprise has brought very little of plants and nothing zoological.

In sending to Sir Joseph proofslips of my “Key” it was not with the intention of having the work, when finished in a few weeks, reviewed by Kew. I never wished any critic of my writings from your establishment; but I seem to have left that impression on you, when I sent the last edition of the “select plants” from an utterance of mine that I never saw the slightest public reference to that work by the Kew-publications.

Regardfully

your

Ferd. von Mueller.

 

The Lamarkian dual method was specially demanded from me here; I found it a most difficult one, requiring all my logic-power to deal with the subject without disrupting the chain of affinity. The alterations in organology are made from medical and thence zoological grounds, while the simplification is chosen, to render the work also available to ordinary elementary schools. Spare me in the late autumn of my life the pain of dealing harshly with the work, should the ideas, which I evolved, be not in consonance with those of the workers of Kew.

I have not yet seen Bonnier’s4 new work, of which I learnt only lately through the Gardeners chronicle; but have ordered that book5

 

Selaginella

1
Date stamped Royal Gardens Kew 27 Nov 1887. Annotated by W. Thiselton-Dyer And 29.11.87 [letter not found].
2

Annotated by J. Baker adjacent to this paragraph:An interesting & very distinct new species, 229* in my Synopsis Will describe it in Journal of Botany.

Selaginella angustiramea was described under the joint authority of M and Baker in B88.14.01.

3
To New Guinea. The specimen was collected by W. Sayer (B88.14.01).
4
J. Baker(?) has written Durand? adjacent to this line. He may have been referring to Durand (1888), which was published in parts from 1877 (TL2) or to Durand and Pittier (1881), a local flora of the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland, but neither work contains a ‘key’. Both are in the Library at MEL.
5
A review of Bonnier & Layens (1887) was published in the Gardeners’ chronicle, 13 August 1887 (vol. 2, series 3), p. 197. M is known to have owned Bonnier & Layens (1880) [MEL library], but the library does not hold a copy of the 1887 work. Each work is a tabular ‘key’ to plants of the respective regions.

Please cite as “FVM-87-10-19,” 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 25 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/87-10-19