To William Thiselton-Dyer   12 September 1888

12/9/88.1

 

This time, dear Mr Dyer, I send the fruits if Livistona Mariae. I fear they got too dry on the long way to me; but they may serve Herbarium-purposes, the species being so rare and geographically so remarkable also

Congratulate Sir Joseph also on my behalf, to have entered on the 8th thousand of the Bot. Mag.2 Through half of the fifth thousand the whole of the sixth and seventh I had this gigantic publication from month to month, as its numbers appeared. Let me hope, that Sir Joseph will remain in strength and health, to see an other thousand through, when he will have lived into the 20th century! Long before that I shall require only the 6 by 2, which finally is enough for all of us!

It was very pleasing to me, to see my name once more identified with the bot Mag through the Sarcochilus Hartmanni.3 Poor Hartmann became also a Martyr to the N. Guin. clime; but he was, to the relieve4 of my mind, not my emissary.

Regardfully your

Ferd von Mueller.

 

I influenced neither by my presense in Sydney nor by any other means my election to the Presidency of the Australian Association for 1889. Indeed I was not in Sydney through an accidental fall from a tram-cart which laid me up nearly the whole of August, and which still prevents me walking about.5

 

Livistona Mariae

Sarcochilus Hartmanni

1
Date stamped: Royal Gardens Kew 22.Oct. 88. Annotated in pencil by[Thiselton-Dyer?]: Ackd 25.10.88 (letter not found), and Sir JDH; and by Hooker: JDH.
2
Hooker (1865-1904), plate 7000 was published in June 1888; Joseph Hooker's first plate as editor, 5486, was published in January 1865.
3
Hooker (1865-1904), vol. 114, plate 7010; the specimen figured did not come to Kew via M, but from 'J. F. Roberts, nurseryman, of Kew near Melbourne', however, M did name the species. See M's complaints to W. Thiselton-Dyer, 1 May 1888.
4
relief?
5

M fell from a Melbourne tram on 31 July 1888; see M to T. Wilson, 1 August 1888, and Argus , 1 August 1888, p. 7. He was as a result unable to attend the first Congress of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Sydney, 28 August-3 September 1888. During the Congress M was elected President of the Association and in this capacity presided over the second Congress, held in Melbourne in January 1890.

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Please cite as “FVM-88-09-12,” 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/88-09-12