12/4 89
Accompanying my official letter1 by a private one now, dear Dr McGregor, you will kindly allow me to point out, that (as stated telegraphically in reply to your telegram2) the geographic branch here cannot spend any thing out of its fund outside of its special science, and that my Department is too slenderly endowed, as to admit of spending any large sum on a collector.3 Moreover I never paid for travelling botanic collectors more than £150 a year, out of which they would have to pay even their travelling expenses, altho collecting material was found them and paper for their collections was paid extra. Even at this moderate rate, none of my former botanic Collectors did furnish even approximately a value for the expenditure incurred; indeed Sir Will. Hooker came to the same result with most of his Kew Emissaries, as he wrote me in 1854, and abolished them and never reestablished collectorship for the Kew-Gardens. It is different with zoologic Collectors, who can realize for their gains always much larger returns than botanic Collectors.
What a pity that we have not yet telegraphic communication with Port Moresby. Could that not be accomplished by a subsidy to the Cable-Company, which has its line to Thursday Island? Such a measure would give more impulse to N.G. trade and settlement than any other effort. Could a Gardener be appointed out of your means at £150 a year and £50 extra for tools &c to introduce and test culture plants
I could send a first [rate] Gardener on those terms from here. He might perhaps accompany the party up to the Owen Stanley's Range and afterwards stay there, sowing seeds of useful plants on the way up for naturalising valuable plants. All that I could spend in my Department to subsidise a Collector or Gardener, if he also collected, would be £50 for the trip.
I am afraid, that as a Sexagenarian I shall have passed away, or be forestalled, before the last great wish of my professional life is realized.
Regardfully your
Ferd. von Mueller
As the Colony Victoria pays already £5000 to the N.G. fund I could not ask the Vict Government to spend extra
I would help a Gardener there grandly with sendings from here
M to W. MacGregor, 12 April 1889 (in this edition as 89-04-12a).
W. MacGregor to M, 29 March 1889 (in this edition as 89-03-29b), to which no telegraphic reply has been found.
MacGregor had suggested that the £500 granted by the Victorian Government to the Victorian Branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia to support exploration in New Guinea should be spent on a full-time botanical collector attached to his office.
MS is a letterpress copy.
Please cite as “FVM-89-04-12b,” 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