3rd Feb: [188]81
Dear Baron Mueller,
Mr Bäuerlen returned to Sydney yesterday, and I requested him to send you two duplicate receipts for £5 each, which I beg to enclose.2 He says he posted the receipts to you for each payment, but in his travels it is quite possible they have gone astray.
We have just been balancing up with Mr Bäuerlen & the Committee have paid him £46 salary together with £6 the coach-fare (one way), from Bourke to Wilcannia.3 Will you be willing to pay the other £6? The expedition has cost the Committee £80, which is of course double the original estimate, and although I believe Mr Bauerlen has [done] well, and has obtained many interesting specimens, yet the same sum of money spent in richer country would have produced greater additions to the Museum. You will observe that although the Museum contains some very good specimens of Australian economic botany, there are very many specimens of common things not in the collections, and the Committee is anxious to fill up all these gaps before taking steps to obtain specimens which will be expensive to collect however desirable they may be.
The Committee has therefore requested Mr Bäuerlen to hold himself in readiness to go on another collecting tour, and probably at first he will collect in the neighbourhood of Sydney. I am engaged in preparing a list of desiderata, and when this is ready he will set out. Such common timbers for instance as E. maculata and E. [resinifera] are not in the collection (which contains hundreds of Australian timbers), and he must get Eucalyptus timbers good, bad and indifferent.
I thank you for very kindly forwarding the supplementary list of N. W. plants.4 I suppose Mr Bäuerlen will be writing to you now he has returned.
The Committee scarcely think that sending Mr Bäuerlen to Mt Seaview is expedient in the interests of this institution, especially at the present time, but I hope a private party may undertake the trip seeing that from the information I collected some time ago from the police authorities,5 the exploration is not likely to be a formidable one
With many thanks for your kind congratulations on our centenary.6
Believe me,
Yours very truly,
J. H. Maiden.
The Baron Ferd: von Mueller K.C.M.G. F.R.S
&c &c &c
Eucalyptus maculata
Eucalyptus resinifera
Please cite as “FVM-88-02-03,” 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 2 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/88-02-03