From William John Macleay   14 November 1887

LINNEAN SOCIETY

N.S.W.

Sydney 14th November 1887

My dear Baron

I think I will be able to undertake the identification & description of the New Guinea Insects you wrote about1 but before positively undertaking the task I should like to see them. Could you manage to send me the entire collection of all orders of the Insects. If I find that I cannot satisfactorily undertake the description of them I shall return them without delay & if I do describe them I shall return them with as little delay as possible. Do you wish the descriptions published here in the Linnean Proceedings or sent to you in Melbourne for publication elsewhere?2 I shall of course be glad to accept for my own Museum specimens of any of the Insects of which there are duplicates, but I make no claim for any, & will leave that to be arranged by you after the return of the Insects.

I am my dear Baron

yours very truly

William Macleay

1
Letter not found.
2
Macleay (1887) described the Coleoptera 'collected during the Australian Geographical Society's expedition to the Fly River, New Guinea during the winter months of last year' (i.e. 1885) on p. 136, but at the end of the paper wrote that he would not proceed with the description of the more than 60 species of Phytophagi in the collection since 'I find that Mr Martin Jacoby is now engaged upon the "Descriptions of the new genera and species of the Phytophagus Coleoptera of the Indo-Malayan and Austro-Malayan subregions, contained in the Civic Museum of Genoa," and as that museum ... [holds] the insects taken by Signor [Luigi Maria] D'Albertis on the Fly River, ... [and] if I proceed with my present work, Mr Jacoby and I would be, in many cases, describing the same insects' (p. 204). The present letter almost certainly refers to collections made during the 1887 expedition led by Walter Cuthbertson, who returned to Melbourne on 21 October (Argus, 24 October 1887, p. 6). No paper by Macleay on the insects of this expedition appeared in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of NSW. M sent at least some of the collection to London; see Distant (1888).

Please cite as “FVM-87-11-14,” 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 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/87-11-14