To William Thiselton-Dyer   20 October 1888

20/10/88.1

 

This morning, dear Mr Dyer, I received your kind letter,2 in which you express a wish for the completion of the set of publications or volumes, issued by the R.S. of Vict. I have at once adressed the Hon. Secr, begging of him to ask the Council, to grant your request. I am not on the Council for many years though repeatedly asked, simply I have no time left so late in life, to enter on the routine work of the Society, though I am its only remaining founder, being the survivor of three, who in 1854 formed it or arranged for its formation in my room at the bot Garden in 1854.3 The hall was also built under my Presidency (30 years ago) and about that time I obtained from H. M.4 also the Charter for it through our Council.5 The hall is too far away from my office-dwelling to go often too and fro. As regards the Annals of Bot. I subscribed from the Commencement for an impression. I have now asked in writing the Librarian of the Melb. public Library, to induce the trustees, to secure a set of and the continuations of this important periodical for their great Institution.6 I will see, whether the Austral. Universities, on three of which I am a Hon. Examiner,7 will take the Annals. If you wrote to Sir James Hector, he could use his influence in the same way at the Otago Christchurch and other N. Z. Universities, Museums, High Schools &c, Sir Joseph8 being so intimately connected with the sciences in N. Z.

At our Universities however in Australia the teaching of Bot. comes only up in connection with the art-course or medical curriculum; in a young colony where everyone strives, to found a first home, Botany cannot become a profession, for it would not be a breadgiving study or occupation (my position here depends not on botany much, but on rural and technol. work); it can here be only subsidiary or collateral to the practical professions, and what is absolutely necessary for them puts such a science as Botany quite back. The "struggle for existence" in young Countries is so hard to professionists!

The Indices of Key I and the 7th Edit of the Select plants9 are now passing through the press also yet some tables for the "Key."10 I am afraid I have not done sufficient justice to your admirable Bulletins;11 too much crowded in various work on me in 1887 & 1888 (Exhib duties &c12) so I could not overtake all the work & will fuller notice your Bulletins in any future edition.13

Always regardfully yr

Ferd von Mueller

 

The Presidency of the Austr Assoc for 188914 will give a great deal of engagements, highly honorable but time-taking as you will have found out for Bath.15 In January I am to preside in the therapeutic Sect of the Austral Medical Congress.

1
Date stamped : Royal Gardens Kew 3 Dec. 88.
2
Letter not found.
3
See Home (2015).
4
Her Majesty, Queen Victoria.
5
The Society has no formal Royal charter; permission to use the term 'Royal' in its title was granted on 8 November 1859 (Duke of Newcastle to Henry Barkly, Governor of Victoria, Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Victoria, vol. 4, 1860, p. lv). See also H. Barkly to M, 13 January 1860 (in this edition as 60-01-13b) and M to H. Barkly, 17 January 1860 (in this edition as 60-01-17b).
6
Letter not found. The State Library of Victoria holds a run of the journal from vol. 1, 1887.
7
University of Melbourne (M to J. James, 7 November 1861, and M to A. Brownless, 25 November 1861 [in this edition as 61-11-25a]) University of Sydney (H. Barff to M, 26 July 1886); and University of Adelaide (University of Adelaide Council Minutes, 16 October 1885, p. 336).
8
Hooker.
9
B88.11.02; B88.12.01,
10
Presumably pp. 529-50, B88.11.02.
11
See M to W. Thiselton-Dyer, 23 May 1888.
12
Although M did not attend the Jubilee International Exhibition, Adelaide, 1887 (M to Royal Society of New South Wales, 1 August 1887), he prepared exhibits for it and was awarded certificates, e.g., First Order of Merit for Publications (in this edition as 87-00-00f). He also prepared exhibits for, and received certificates from, the Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1889 (e.g. Gold Medal Diploma, in this edition as 89-09-29) and the Centennial International Exhibition, Melbourne, 1888-9 (e.g. First Order of Merit, in this edition as 89-01-341b). For the Melbourne Exhibition he was also appointed a comissioner (Victoria Government Gazette, 17 May 1887, p. 1297). M was President of the Therapeutics section of the Intercolonial Medical Congress, Melbourne, 1889 (see B89.13.16).
13
Some entries in B91.09.01 and B95.08.04 cited 'Dyer's Kew Bulletin', e.g. in B95.08.04, p. 164, Delphinium zalil. In many cases M cited Dyer without mentioning the Bulletin; for example, in B91.09.01, p. 72 he cited him for the information that leaves of Boehmeria nivea could be used as food for silkworms, without specifically citing p. 174 of the 1890 Bulletin , where that information is given in an extract from a letter from A. de G. de Fonblanque. This use of B. nivea and the citation remained in B95.08.04, despite M’s subsequently learning that the report had been discredited (see M to W. Thiselton-Dyer, 10 July 1891).
14
Held in Melbourne in January 1890; see B90.01.01.
15
Thiselton-Dyer was President of the Biology section of British Association for the Advancement of Science for its meeting at Bath (Report of the fifty-eighth meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held at Bath in September 1888), to which he delivered his Presidential Address (Thiselton-Dyer (1889)). He was also secretary to the 'Committee appointed for the purpose of exploring the Flora of the Bahamas', and the 'Committee appointed for the purpose of continuing the preparation of a Report on our presnet knowledge of the Flora of China', and a member of the 'Committee appointed for the purpose of taking steps for the establishment of a Botanical Station at Peradeniya, Ceylon', all of which reported at the meeting.

Please cite as “FVM-88-10-20,” 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 24 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/88-10-20