BRITISH MUSEUM (NATURAL HISTORY),
Cromwell Road,
London: S.W.
5 February 1892.
Dear Baron von Mueller
You have been so very kind to us in sending valuable Algae that I venture to ask you to do me a great favour in procuring a few spirit Specimens. A most interesting research on Scaberia Agardhii, Notheia anomala & Hormosira (on which it grows) on Myriodesma and on Xiphophora = Fucodium gladiatus1 Labill. and on Sarcophycus potatorum is now in progress partly in my own hands & partly in those of a pupil. We have carried the matter so far as our dried material permits and now spirit Specimens are necessary to enable us to solve a problem of the very greatest morphological importance. In our Herbarium we have Sarcophycus from Port Fairy Victoria and Notheia anomala on Hormosira (both needed) also from Port Fairy — as well as from Georgetown Tasmania. Xiphora2 (Fucodium gladiatus also from several points on the coast of Victoria & Tasmania and Myriodesma from Geelong & Brighton Beach.3 Perhaps Mr Bracebridge Wilson will add to his former kindness to me by helping you in this. We have Scaberia Agardhii collected by yourself in Streaky Bay4 & from others King Georges Sound5 Bass Strait, Adelaide (R. Brown)6 Tasmania etc.
I know how heartily you encourage research and I trust to your interest in this work and kindness of heart to enable to settle beyond doubt this most absorbing question of the development of the conceptacles of these Algae.
In about two months Messrs Dulau will issue British Museum Phycological Memoirs Part I.7 which I am sure will interest you. May I ask you to make Part II interesting as well!
Yours very truly
George Murray.8
Fucodium gladiatus
Hormosira
Myriodesma
Notheia anomala
Sarcophycus potatorum
Scaberia Agardhii
Xiphophora
Xiphora
Fucodium gladiatum?
Xiphophora?
Both Vic.
SA. M never visited Streaky Bay; the specimen in question must have been collected by someone else and passed on to him.
WA.
G. Murray (1892-5) includes some references to algae collected by Robert Brown (1773-1858) during the Investigator voyage. However, no collections of any type made near the current site of Adelaide are recorded in R. Brown (2001), pp. 169-72, which deals with navigating Saint Vincent's Gulf. If this is a different Brown, active in Adelaide after it was settled by the British in 1836, the collector has not been identified.
See Dulau & Co. to M, 12 April 1892
G. Murray (1892-5). See also G. Murray to M, 18 November 1892 (in this edition as 92-11-18a).
MS bears the embossed insignia of the British Museum (Natural History). MS annotation by M: 'Answ 6/6/92'. Letter not found.
Please cite as “FVM-92-02-05,” 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