26/11/95
By the Messageries maritimes Mail Steamer Armand Behic you will receive two boxes with minerals, Coleopteres from North Queensland, some Algs and several other articles, dear Mons. Milne-Edwards. They are under the special care of Mons Sub-Captain Castellan, who has promised to see the two boxes forwarded on to the Musée and with a notification of yours to that effect. The Armand Behic will leave here 1 Dec and will therefore be at Marseille about the end of the year or in the beginning of January. Have you a friend or Agent in Marseille, to look out for any goods intended for your grand establishment, in the event of two boxes not arriving in the beginning of January. I can see a great danger of the most valuable sendings, such as cannot be replaced being lost between Marseille and Paris
They might never be given to the railway for Paris or they may not be forwarded at Paris from the Railway to the Museum, as no bill of lading had been given. I have thus no information yet, whether the roots in Alcohol of Nuytsia and Atkinsonia reached your excellent colleage Prof Van Tieghem. They were sent in a wooden box as freight-good, but without connoissement,1 the Messageries maritimes Steamer taking the case free from Melbourne to Marseille. I have also been quite in uncertainty yet, whether the large flat specimen of Nickel weighing about 80 lb from S. W. Tasmania has ever arrived at the Museum and so it is with other sendings. When Dr Rougier was Medical Officer in the "Australien" he went always from Marseille to Paris and took my sendings safely with him.
Very regardfully your
Ferd von Mueller
If your honored Colleagues would in each case send a postcard, I would then be sure that things had arrived
I sent Prof Max. Cornu a case with living plants of Xanthorrhoae minor by one of the last Messag. Marit. Steamers
List of Articles contained in boxes for France2 27/11/95.
| 1 | Pkt | Algae | Port Phillip3 |
| 3 | do | do | Lacepede Bay. S. Aust. |
| 4 | sponges | King Georges Sound.4 Mr Webb. | |
| Algae | do do do | ||
| 5 | boxes | Minerals | Broken Hill N. S. W. |
| 1 | do | Marsilea Drummondi | |
| 1 | box | Coleoptora5 | Tropical East6 coast in Alcohol |
| 1 | do | Adansonia Gregorii | |
| 2 | do | Algae | Port Phillip |
| do | shells | Port Phillip7 | |
| 1 | Boomerang | ||
| 1 | " | Sponges | Geographe Bay8 |
| 1 | Phascolarctus cinereus9 | ||
| 1 | Gorget Lizard | ||
| 110 | pack | Atriplex halimoides | |
| 1 | block | Melal. cuticae11 | Bark for fruit packing12 |
| 1 | Box | specimens | artesian well bores |
Adansonia Gregorii
Atkinsonia
Atriplex halimoides
Marsilea Drummondi
Melaleuca
Nuytsia
Xanthorrhoae minor
Bill of lading.
List written by unknown with additions by M as indicated.
WA.
Vic.
Coleoptera?
East written by M over indecipherable.
The rest of the list written by M.
WA.
Koala.
This and the next two entries are by M in the left margin.
Melaleuca cuticae, i.e. cuticle (bark) of a Melaleuca species.
Probably Melaleuca leucadendron bark; see M to the Leader, March 1895 (in this edition as 95-03-00a).
Please cite as “FVM-95-11-26a,” 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