Since I last wrote to you, dear Sir William,1 I received the enclosed letter from Mr Edgar, the director of the botanical Garden of Rockhampton.2 I advised him to send the vanilla plants at once,3 as the wet season will have set in by the time in which they can arrive in New Guinea. I presume you have a good practical gardener there to initiate these new cultures. Cinchonas you can easily raise from seeds, and these I could procure. But the Cinchonas, as you will see in my work on a select plant for industrial culture, should be raised in the less hot upper regions of the mountain. A copy of this work I sent you some few years ago.4
Very regardfully yours,
Ferd. von Mueller.
Cinchona
Probably M to W. MacGregor, 23 October 1895.
James Edgar. Letter not found.
Letter not found.
That is, Select extra-tropical plants … The edition sent to MacGregor was probably B91.09.01.
Letter not found. The text given here is from 'Notes by the late Baron Sir Ferdinand von Mueller, K.C.M.G. on botanical collections.' In Annual Report on British New Guinea from 1st July, 1895, to 30th June, 1896, Appendix Y: 92 (B97.06.01).
The wet season in New Guinea normally begins in December, so it is likely that the letter was written after M to W. MacGregor, 23 October 1895, which it follows in the source. It is dated to November as the latest likely date that it could have been sent.
Please cite as “FVM-95-11-00g,” 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