To Georgina King   14 July 1896

14/7/96

Your kind letter has reached me, dear Miss King, also the additional note on the hatched by the Rev Dr Gill,¹ to whom — please — convey my best thanks. I certainly will dedicate to him a new plant, but before the middle of August I shall have no time for phytographic labours, rural work absorbing all my attention til then and perhaps later. Here the season has been one of fogs and nebules almost continually and thus the danger of rust is greater in Wheat than in any with much clear sunlight, as I pointed out in 1865,² when I was President of the Rust-Committee (in a very bad year) of the Gov Board of Agriculture as constituted at that time.

Will Mr Moore return?³ I fear not, as he not likely will live any longer in Sydney. Altho' we held very opposite views on the objects of botanic gardens, he always acted honorably towards me. English Gardening in an egyptian clime can only be carried on at fabulous expense, which sums in young colonies, so I always held, go largely for promoting rural interests for the benefit of the producing classes and thus for the breadwinning people and to augment the revenue. Now my counsels, for which I made so strenuous I might say heroic efforts here with slender means, seem to prevail also in your colony, and a reaction under the deep financial distress of these colonies, seems to have set in with you. Moreover I had never any water for extensive lawns and mosaic or carpet flower-beds, but I had the Victoria regia, the Geyser fountain, the aviary, the pine sloaps,⁴ the first large glasshouse in Australia and a marvellously rich collection of varied plants, the industrial kinds largely represented, and I supplied on an immense scale for 15 years as Director here in the then only commencing Victorian colonisation; the grounds of Churches, manses, Cemeteries, public reserves, railway enclosures with plants, so that when I ceded from my Directorship I was presented with an adress of thanks by the Clergy of the Church of England⁵ If the 1/4 million sterling, which has been spent on the bot Garden here since I left had been under my administration, what vast utilitarian work would have been accomplished!

I see Sir Frederick⁶ very rarely; we live so far from each other, our researches are in different directions, I never give up time for attending to mere formal festivals at the University, and have — for which I am thankful late in life, when my time becomes so precious, [no]⁷ further duties as an hon. University-Examiner which I was for therapeutics and materia medica for many years. Are the "Select Plants" often mentioned in your colony? I know they are in almost daily use there on⁸ many public institutions, journals and by private colonists. I have worked on that book fully 30 years, and an occasional kindly word in an official Document would be cheering to me and aid in the support of my Department But I find so often in Australia that those who use my original works give themselves the air, as if they had known all already themselves. Let me hope, that you and those near and dear to you are all happy and well.

Ferd von Mueller