From Ferdinand von Mueller to Alphonse de Candolle   6 July 1889

6/7/89.

Allow me, honored and venerable Sir, to offer my felicitation for the distinction, which the Linné-Society has bestowed on you in conferring its annual¹, an act by which the Society honors itself also. It is quite touching, to see a grandson of yours proceed to the Linnean forum in London, there to receive this reward on your behalf, this nepos doubtless aspiring to maintain and to extend the spender² of the Candollean name!³ When in 1840 I began to become extensively acquainted with the works of your illustrious father, your own name became through the prodromus soon also familiar to me. I lived then to see a hopeful son of yours arise in science, and now it must be infinitely cheering to you, when you contemplate, that the Candollean fame will through the youngest generation be carried also far into the next century! May you attain a Chevreulian age,⁴ to watch the progress of the science of plants, in which likely through descendents of yours a leading part will be personally taken for a long time to come.

I am now the more gratified, that Engler, Durand and others sustain the resuscitation of the first genus Candollea of Labillardière, to which, when the Salsolaceae of Australia are done, I will devote for lithographic illustration a quarto-volume.⁵ It may be of interest of you now to learn, that the idea of founding a medal for the L.S. from its own resources arose from myself, and was several years ago urged on Carruthers, Masters and other prominent Linneans by repeated letters of mine.⁶

Ever with profound veneration

your Ferd. von Mueller

I had anticipated your suggestion of illustrating by a few supplemental plates the earliest state of development of Acacias by sowing the seeds of various species for that purpose, the change from the pinnate to the phyllodinous state of the foliage being so remarkable.