To William Thiselton-Dyer¹    2 July 1891

2/7/91.²

Thanks for your considerate proposal, my honored friend, that a principal set of Dr Henry’s west-chinese collections should be secured for £22.10/- by my Department.³ I at once recommended this to the Minister of my Department, who at once approved of it, so that the sum will be sent, so soon as the collection reaches here.⁴ Let me thank you for your thoughtfulness of my establishment.

I had some idea, that you would have caused the Faradaya splendida to be illustrated in the Bot. Mag., as it is such a handsome and rare plant, and as it ought to be regarded as the typic species of the genus.⁵

I find, that I erred in restoring Diplanthera of du Petit Thouars.⁶ When turning to Steinheil’s article in the Annales des sciences naturelles,⁷ I missed the “ at the end of the quotation and thought the specific name of Steinheil belonged also to Thuars⁸ in support of the genus. I never saw Thuars work, and Mr Jackson does not say, that he only published genera.⁹ So did Scopoli, but he did give stability to his genera in the binominal system by quotations.¹⁰

Always regardfully

your

Ferd von Mueller

Will you kindly impress on Dr Cooke, that in the vol. on Australian mycology, for which 4 colonies have voted each £100 - - , and which issue received my full support here, my Department is not treated unjustly. Not only was I the first, who extensively collected fungs in Continental Australia, but I had from amateur and also many paid collectors very numerous species first from Queensland who never would have collected fungs otherwise,¹¹ which amassing of material went on for 30 years; yet in the Grevillea¹² very little acknowledgement is recently given either to my Department nor myself, while some amateurs, who communicate directly with Dr Cooke, get infinite praise, so that it looks as if I had neglected altogether this branch of knowledge.¹³ You have even lots of fungs from me in the Kew Herbarium.

Diplanthera

Faradaya splendida