From Walter Gill to Ferdinand von Mueller   18 Feb 1891

Adelaide 18/2/91

Baron Sir F. von Mueller

K.C.M.G. M. & Ph.D F.R.G.S. F.LS

Government Botanist

Melbourne

My dear Baron

Many thanks for your kind congratulations on my election as a Fellow of the Linnean Society.¹ I send under separate cover a casuarina which is commonly called "Black Oak" and grows in parts of the Flinders Ranges² and on the plains near the foot of the Ranges. I do not think it can in any way be regarded as "C. glauca" or the "Bull oak" found in the South East near Bordertown and Wolseley,³ as that grows with a clean symetrical trunk for from 6 to 10 and even 20 feet ere it branches, and its 'cone' or, more correctly, its seed vessel, is shorter and much more flattened than the seed vessels now sent you, which grow on a much more stunted and generally useless kind of tree: indeed it is sometimes almost as small as a very large specimen of "casuarina dystila"⁴ from which it can, however, easily be known. The enclosed specimen has a wide range as I noticed it (and indeed saw it years ago) on my late trip to the North — up beyond Beltana between there and Leigh's Creek,⁵ in the ranges. Your opinion will settle the question.⁶

Kind regards

very faithfully yours

Walter Gill

PS. I send also all I could get near Hergott⁷ of an acacia in the creek some miles off: the sections of the seed pod got broken off, but you will see how they join: I hope you will be able to make something out of it: but it is a poor specimen; all that the grasshoppers had left!

W. G.

Acacia

Casuarina dystila

Casuarina glauca