5/3/94.
Since I last wrote some few days ago,1 honored Sir, I found still 4 additional Meliaceae for sending to you, which therefore form a small
additional parcel by this weeks mail. Will you kindly write on arrival of the whole, so that I may know that all is rightly in your hands, as any loss would be largely irreparable. As you may doubtless have the Papuan of the Berlin — and Leyden — Herbaria accessible to you, I have not sent them
I hope, you will cheer me by elaborating soon my sendings2
With regardful remembrance
your
Ferd. von Mueller
Meliaceae
M to C. de Candolle, 1 March 1894.
C. de Candolle (1902) began:
'En 1894, je reçus du Baron Ferdinand de Mueller une collection de Méliacées, que ce savant me priait de déterminer. Elles provenaient presque toutes du territoire anglais de la Nouvelle-Guinée et il se trouvait aussi parmi elles quelques plantes des iles Samoa et de la Nouvelle-Calédonie.
Malgré tout l'intérêt que présentait cette collection je dus en ajourner provisoirement l'étude, ayant alors d’autres travaux à terminer. C'est seulement dans le courant de l'été dernier qu'il m'a été possible de l'entreprendre.
Dans l'intervalle, illustre Directeur du jardin et du musée botaniques de Melbourne a été enlevé à la science, ce qui augmenta encore mon regret de n'avoir pu m'occuper plus tôt de la collection qu'il avait eu l'amabilité de m'envoyer. J'avais d'autant plus lieu de me reprocher ce retard, que la flore du territoire de la Nouvelle-Guinée a fait, dans ces derniers temps, l'objet de publications dans lesquelles quelques-unes des espèces nouvelles de la collection qui m'avait été adressée auraient pu se trouver déjà décrites.'
[In 1894, I received from Baron Ferdinand de Mueller a collection of Meliaceae, which that scholar asked me to determine. They almost all came from the English territory of New Guinea and there were also among them some plants from the Samoan Islands and New Caledonia.
Despite all the interest that this collection presented, I had temporarily to postpone the study, having then other work to complete. It was only during last summer that I was able to undertake it.
In the meantime, the illustrious Director of the Melbourne botanical garden and museum was lost to science, which further increased my regret at not having been able to take care sooner of the collection which he had been kind enough to send me. I had all the more reason to reproach myself for this delay, as the flora of the territory of New Guinea has, in recent times, been the subject of publications in which some of the new species from the collection which had been sent could have already been described.]
Specimens collected by W. Bauerlen, J. Chalmers, E. Betche, E. Edlefeldt, H. O. Forbes, W. Macgregor, W. A. Sayer and S. Whitmee were used in the descriptions. Several from New Caledonia are attributed to either J. Roberts or L. F. Roberts, likely to be the Kew, Vic, nurseryman James Fountain Roberts who read notes on a recent tour to New Caledonia to the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia (Vic. Branch) at its meeting of 17 February 1887 (Argus,18 February 1887, p. 3), and who also supplied M with plants sent to him from New Caledonia; see J. Roberts to M, 1 August 1884.
Please cite as “FVM-94-03-05a,” 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