18/9/88.
It needs not my assurance, dear Mr Gill, that I will be happy to name any plants for you, even mosses, lichens and fungs; and with this view I would advise you, to send specimens, numbered consecutively, and to keep back a set correspondingly numbered. What you may send need not be large, so long as it is instructive, by bearing flowers or fruits. Small parcels come best by successive mails, and can better be attended to at once, than largely accumulated lots. If you include in your collection also the minutest spring-weeds, little annual rushes, saltbushes, floating and submerged plants, novelties and many rarities would be likely secured.
With best compliments
your Ferd. von Mueller.
Of course I can only through your excellent Chief1 communicate with you, and shall always send the name-lists &c through him.2 The seeds of Acacia iteaphylla will be quite a boon, as it would flower so early in European Conservatories Envelopes, opening at the narrow end, are very convenient, to trust3 plants into, even indiscriminately, so that a dozen or more sorts particularly of small kinds can be trusted together into an envelope, which need not be opened again, but can be placed in sun-light or near a fire-place for drying. A mere pocket-handkerchief, knotted to gether at its four corners will take half a hundred different plants while you are4 any friends of yours are travelling, and these specimens could, when any camp is reached, be placed into envelopes, surplus-branches being broken off before
Acacia iteaphylla
Please cite as “FVM-88-09-18,” 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