16/5/94
The specimens of Meliaceae, honored Sir, sent by me,1 are certainly mostly in a very bad state or imperfect condition, but you must kindly remember that in New Guinea and most parts of Polynesia are as yet no good dwellings and no easily transversable roads, so that in the difficult transit the specimens are apt to suffer. The collectors can also not always from the high trees get flowers and fruits, even if both were obtainable at the same time.
Pray, do not go to any great trouble about this material, as your time is so very valuable; but if you find anything workable among the lot of specimens I shall be delighted if you will elaborate it and publish it there.2 You need not return much one leflet3 and one flower or one fruit will even suffice, if not more can be returned.
As regards transit, I find sending of cases very costly, and never forward anything except as to arrive free at its destination. Since the last 3 years, when under the retrenchments during the great finance-depression in this colony, my resources became so very limited I have adopted the plan, to send the specimens for herbariums by post in small lots. It is the safest, the cheapest and the quickest method. Meliaceae are always brittle and will suffer more in the transit than most other plants
If I can manage to send a case or box of specimens, what will be the best way? Is it best to send by the Messageries maritimes to Marseille? or by the German Steamers to Genoa? Have you any of these two places or elsewhere on the mediterranean Sea an Agent? When I come to the Myoporinae I shall have to make up a caise4 for your herbier. We here by incessent Efforts have now gradually learnt the respective geographic distribution of the numerous Eremophilas over the Australian Continent.
I often think of your illustrious father and indeed also Grandfather and indeed also sometimes of your hopeful grandson.5
With regardful remembrance your
Ferd. von Mueller.
Excuse my writing in English, which I can do much quicker than in French.
Eremophila
Meliaceae
Myoporinae
See M to C. de Candolle, 24 February 1894.
Published in C. de Candolle (1902); see notes to M to C. de Candolle, 5 March 1894 (in this edition as 94-03-05a).
leaflet?
caisse?
Error for son, presumably R. E. Augustin de Candolle? None of the known grandsons of Casimir were born before 1900. Casimir had two sons. Charles Raymond Pyramus de Candolle (1864-1935), civil engineer, employed as a manager of a railway company in Argentina when he applied for membership of the Institution of Civil Engineers (UK) in 1910; Richard Emile Augustin de Candolle (1869-1920) trained as a lawyer, but did not practice, working under the direction of his father in the herbarium in Geneva and becoming its custodian after Casimir's death ([Prain] (1920)).
Please cite as “FVM-94-05-16,” 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