27/5/89.
Allow me, dear Dr Bride, to draw your attention to the offer, made in E. Weigel's Katalog, of 363, Martius' Flora Brasiliensis.1 This magnificent folio-work with its vast number of plates is not likely ever to be obtained again complete and well preserved for 100 guineas, the original price being 150 guineas. I possess it only to a small extent and fragmentary. Though this work, for which the Brazilian Government has during the last 50 years voted large sums, refers to plants of the Western hemisphere, the plates and descriptions are of the greatest importance for critical elucidation of the plants also of the eastern hemisphere. Martius and his coetaneous and successive collaborators are dead, except those who elaborated the last fascicles. I was called on by Prof Eichler in Berlin after Martius death, to write like Hooker and De Candolle to the Minister of Education in Rio Janeiro,2 when no longer a vote was forthcoming, to renew the annual grant, and we were successful in this. Herr Weigel declines to make even an allowance to other booksellers as commission-money, so the work would not be sold cheaper, i.e. this copy, and if the Library trustees here cannot secure it, it is sure to pass into one of the new great libraries, started in America &c3
Regardfully your
Ferd. von Mueller
I am not in direct communication with Weigel, and write this on my own impulse. The works, marked by me in the Katalogue will be order4 for the library of my establishment. Of course the Fl. Braz will have an everlasting value!
Martius (1840-1906). M's letter accompanied by p. 14 of Katalog von Oswald Weigel's Antiquarium in Leipzig: Botanik. Item no. 363 is: 'Flora Brasiliensis. Enumeratio plantarum in Brasilia hactenus detectarum edd. C. F. Ph. de Martius. A. Gu. Eichler, St. Endlicher. Fasc. 1-103. Cum. multis tabulis. Lipsiae 1840-88. gr. fol. br. (M 3382 —).' The asking price noted beside the printed entry is, however, only 2040 Marks.
E. Weigel, to whom M refers, had presumably taken over the firm when Oswald Weigel died in 1881, but left the firm's name unchanged.
Letter not found.
MS annotation: 'To be purchased. Lib Com. 30.7.89'. However, the work does not appear in the catalogue of the State Library of Victoria (online catalogue accessed 3 February 2020).
ordered?
Please cite as “FVM-89-05-27,” 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