3/6/951
Dear Miss Walker
This letter is written by dictation as I do not feel quite well and as it is at a late hour of a laborious day. Your remarks on the eucupealiyptus2 scented interests me greatly and I shall be exceedingly obliged to you if I could obtain sprigs of it with an open flower and ripe fruit also notes on the nature of the bark, and on the soil of which it grows near you it is impossible to name any species of eucupalyptus in so great a genus when the mentioned material is not available. Your painting is excellent but it does not give us the microscopic details your tree perhaps is more apple scented than lemon scented in that case it would be allied to a Victorian species. I would be glad to mention in the next addition3 of my work on select plants your tree also under your honoured name4 by the help of some youth you will doubtless be able to obtain the speciemns asked for. Poor Mrs Capt Cole and her only remaining daughter5 I have not seen for a long time as the enormous amount of work in my department does not allow me to pay visits during this dreadful period of general depression The death of one of the daughters must have left an ever sad blank to the two remaining with regardful remembrance
yours
Ferd. von Mueller
eucupalyptus
eucupealiyptus
The dating is in error as the letter mentions the death of Agnes Cole, who died in October 1895. The letter M to A. Walker, 12 March 1896, thanks Walker for sending the requested Eucalyptus sprig, thus this letter was written before then. M not having seen the surviving members of the Cole family 'for a long time' makes it unlikely that it was written in the last months of 1895. The letter is dated to 6 March 1896, on the assumption that the amanuensis used the 'month, day, year' convention for dating.
Eucalyptus. The spelling suggests that the writer was not a botanist!
edition?
The final edition of M's Select plants was B95.08.04.
Thomas Anne Cole and Margaret Morison Cole; Agnes Bruce Cole died on 20 October 1894.
Please cite as “FVM-96-03-06b,” 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