28/5/91.
Regret the oversight, dear Prof Watson, in not sending you a complete impression of the "second Census of Austr. plants".1 This is now done by the mail. The printing fund was insufficient, to furnish a preface and addenda; but a supplement is likely to appear at the end of this year.2
I do not altogether concur in your views of changes in systems and in names of plants.3 The subject is too large to discuss it in a letter. You may have read however my treatise thereon, written 2 or 3 years ago for the transact. of the R.S. of N.S.W.4 also the preface to the first Census.5 I may however give some few instances, to illustrate my own ideas.
Two European Professors sent me 2 species of Polycarpaea as Gomphrenas, and yet the Amaranthaceae ar6 kept near one end of the system and the Caryophylleae on the other. If RBr overlooked Wilkia of Scopoli,7 who quotes a specific name! when establishing Malcolmia, it was a want of care, particularly at that time, when bot. libraries were not large; if what is not likely8 he willingly passed Scopoli's genus, it was a grave injustice.9
Genera with named species like Hybanthus, Bramia, Bladhia, Temeda10 &c. were simply missed, and not intentionally passed. If such well established genera are left unattended to, where are the exceptions to commence and where to end? Fixity of dual names can only be attained by adopting in all cases the first binary name within a correct genus!
With regardful remembrance your
Ferd. von Mueller.
I hope the woodspecimens for the excellent Prof. Goodale adressed to you, have safely arrived.11
Amaranthaceae
Bladhia
Bramia
Caryophylleae
Gomphrena
Hybanthus
Malcolmia
Polycarpaea
Temeda
Wilkia
B89.12.03.
No supplements to the Second census are known to have been published.
M is presumably reacting to the arrangement used in Gray (1890), edited by Watson & Coulter; see pp. 3-18.
B89.05.04.
B83.03.04.
are.
Scopoli (1777), p. 317, as Wilckia.
What is not likely interlined.
Malcolmia is recorded in IPNI as being erected by W. T. Aiton (1810-13), vol. 4, p. 121; M lists Brown as the author in B69.07.04, p. 18. The genus is included in the part of the work in which TL2 attributes 'most of the new descriptions' to Brown; the formal authority for these species is given to Aiton as there is no explicit evidence in the protologues that Brown was the author. See Mabberly (1885), p. 186.
Themeda?
Sentence is written in the central and left margins of the sheet comprising pages 2 and 3.
Please cite as “FVM-91-05-28,” 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