3/8/95
By this weeks mail dear Cecilia, I shall send to your father the £5 .- .- for your ball-requirements.1 The enclosed plant is the "Sun-Dew" which is not rare near the Serpentine-River.2 I should like next season to have seeds of any of the W.A Sundews, but particularly of this. You may have a young Lady-friend near the Serpentine River, who would have no difficulty to obtain the seeds in the summer. All Sundews are easily recognized by their exoudations, which glitter like dew
Kindly tell your father, that I would answer his letter by next mail.3 I am extremely pressed for time.
With best greeting to all of you
Ferd von Mueller
Although the letter was found among letters received by Isaac Tyson, no evidence has been found of either Tyson or his brother William Tyson, who jointly owned with him the pastoral lease to the Mount Narryer station in WA, having a daughter living at this time. The tone and content of the letter indicate instead that M was writing to a family member, in fact a daughter, 18 years old at the time, of M's niece Bertha Harris, née Wehl. Notwithstanding M's salutation, in both birth and death indexes her given names appear as Clara Cecil; in her immediate family she was apparently known as 'Cis'.
The Harris family apparently moved to WA at about the time of this letter; an obituary of Bertha published after her death in 1922 (Daily news (Perth), 4 October 1922, p. 8), reports that she was born in SA but had been living in the Perth suburb of Claremont for 27 years. How M's letter finished up among his letters to Isaac Tyson is not known.
WA.
No other 1895 letter from M mentioning a sum of £5 has been found.
Please cite as “FVM-95-08-03a,” 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