To William Thiselton-Dyer   28 January 1890

28./1./90.¹

It is with much regret, dear Mr Dyer, that I learn of the failing of the first attempt, to introduce the two splendid Verticordias.² They moreover arrived there in winter, and must have suffered from frost, being subtropic plants. They were to have been shipped several months earlier, but delays arose in finding out the precise localities, as through depasturing and burning off of the scrubs such plants have become very scarce in their native haunts. What I now shall do, is to recommence at once operations in W.A, so that the plants become better established, earlier sent in the season and are more carefully attended to during the voyage. But I would beg you particularly, to leave this introduction in my hands. If you communicated on the subject with any party, connected with establishments here, my ideas and plans, in the usual style, would be taken up, not the slightest mention be made of the originator of the concern, and it be sought also in this instance to take credit of other peoples labour quite unscrupulously and unblushingly.

I will communicate with you from time to time on the progress of the second trial.

Regardfully your

Ferd von Mueller

My alpine tour with a party of the Austral. Association³ was the first since six years, since which time I have not been away a single day from my little cottage through sheer want of time. Indeed I have all that time hardly been out of door, unless occasionally at church and in the Liedertafel. The fresh bracing mountain-air has done me much good. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the work here, my letter-book shows about 3000 letters annually from my own hand.

Verticordia