To Joseph Hooker   1 January 1896

New Year 1896.1

 

Your letter, just received, dear Sir Joseph,2 has been immensely cheering to me, as it recognises so fully the sacrifices, made by me for maintaining the dignity and efficiency of my Department also at a period of great difficulty, the depression having become augmented here by the excessive drought, impairing largely the yields of wool and meat and wheat our staple-products

I wish you and Dr Dyer a happy new year in every respect, trusting that the clouds of politic commotion will soon be dispersed, turbulant times of treatening wars always impairing to some extent the resources of science-establishments.3

Accept my best thanks for your own kind wishes towards me during the new annual span of time, on which now we have entered. Will it be the last, destined for me by merciful divine providence? As my independent researches reach back to the first half of the century, I should have wished to live til the end of this centenary space of time, but can hardly hope this - May I be spared a long lingering last illness, alone the world as I am!

My views on antarctic further explorations I have - If I remember rightly - explained to you already. Britain aught not to left unrepresented in the new movement. But in these turbulant times of politic commotions even two of the oldest Steamship of the R.N. can ill be spared. To me it seems advisable to limit the engagements to two summers and one winters, which would lessen the expenditure by half. Steamers will in that time more accomplish then formerly sailing ships could. The Norwegians might concentrate their efforts on traversing the icy plateaux of Vict. Land. with Macquarie island for a depot. The Germans will take Kerguelens Land for such; so the British might operate from Graham’s Land, where there is a good harbour and in summer not much ice, and South Africa ought to give some help4

Of your never to be forgotten father with his ample generous sentiment in his expression I had since many years a large portrait along with one of yours on a wall of one of my study-rooms. But I treasure this additional one highly indeed and I feel quite young again, when I look at it.

The picture of RBr is remarkable, as it is so different from both the two lithograms I have of his features, all three so little alike each other, as to render it strange to emanate from the same mortal.5

Let me congratulate you on your 4th sons agricultural triumph.6 The Medaillon of your father I do not possess;7 so I shall look on it as gem when you kindly send it. Andropogoneae are certainly a perplexing tribe. Till we know all species the genera can not be fixed absolutely. I cannot yet fully understand the nomenclature of Erianthus and Pollinia. Kunth seems to have taken the most acceptable view about the two.8

In all Melbourne dark ink is unobtainable, [as] you see from my letters.9

Your Son Brian has just discovered Hydrargyrum10 for the first time in W.A.11

Andropogoneae

Erianthus

Pollinia

1
Annotated by Joseph Hooker:And X [Medallion] sent 2/96. and, above the date: Melbourne.
2
J. Hooker to M, 17 November 1895.
3
Among other conflicts, in 1895 there were armed conflicts between Japan and China in which European powers were involved; the French were involved in a war in Madagascar; the Royal Navy was deployed off Morocco and near Turkish Armenia; there were concerns about the mobilization of the Bulgarian army; rebellions in Cuba and Brazil were being fought; Russia was reorganizing its Far Eastern army; and the British mounted a ‘punitive expedition’ against the Ashanti in the Gold Coast.
4
Land, where there is a good harbour ... South Africa ought to give some help is written in the margin on the back of folio 24.
5
Joseph Hooker sent portraits of William Hooker and Robert Brown to M on 17 November 1895; see annotations on M to J. Hooker, 31 August 1895.
6
Reginald Hawthorn Hooker; see J. Hooker to M, 17 November 1895.
7
Presumably the 1866 Wedgwood medallion by Thomas Woolner, see National Portrait Gallery, London, item NPG 1032. M had previously received a medallion and had given it to the Public Library in Melbourne; see M to J. Hooker, 6 November 1868 (in this edition as 68-11-06a), and M to W. Vale, 5 September 1872.
8
Hooker was describing the grasses for volume 7 of J. Hooker (1875–97), and found it a difficult group, being dissatisfied with the result (J. Hooker to M, 12 June 1896). Kunth (1833–50) discusses Erianthus at pp. 478–9, vol. 1, and treats Polliniaas a synonym of Andropogon(for example, p. 488).
9
This paragraph is written in the left margin of the front of f. 25.
10
Mercury.
11
Written in the left margin on the back of f. 23. There is no valediction.

Please cite as “FVM-96-01-01,” 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 20 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/96-01-01