This is a letter begun a year ago & mislaid — Dec 26/59.
My dear Mueller
Thanks for your letter of 15th Nov.
& the enclosed specimens of the most curious variety of
. Your grass is
.
The Senna
never ripens seed with us, you had better write to India for it. Thomson or Thwaites
are sure to have it.
The
is a
Viscum
very near if not identical with V. articulatum? a most horribly variable plant.
Decr. 26th 1859. We are very glad to see the excellent beginning of the Flora of Victoria.
The plates are really very good & I do not think you would gain any thing by colored
plates. With regard to the Flora of Australia to which your last letter
says that your Govt. have voted £1000 — I really do not know what is best done —
Bentham is little inclined for it — at all, & certainly would not do it in partnership.
It is a much more difficult task than you imagine. Working where you are & as your
are it is impossible but that you should form too high an estimate of your own
advantages
& too low a one of the vast stores of material in England & France. You can have
no idea of the labor entailed in this country. No Botanist with a scientific reputation
at stake would at this period undertake a Flora of Australia without collating the
plants of Brown
& of the French expeditions, & it would be a wrongful injustice to Cunningham
& multitudes of other Botanists & collectors to ignore their labors Then again differing
as you & Bentham would do, as to the limits of orders, genera & species, the combined
work would be most unsatisfactory to both parties & to the public & the correspondence
would be endless. I speak from experience — I […]
& feel deeply the very different estimate I found of myself & my materials in India
& after my return — when I found that I sank into utter insignificance in point of
matter & knowledge.
Meanwhile the Govt. here have taken up the idea of Col. Floras in a cheap inexpensive
form & may possibly do something in it but nothing is settled — my Father & I have
recommended cheap 8vo works with short descriptions & no plates, or outline lithographs
like Ic. Plant., to be sold separately & we recommend that expensive illustrations
or expensive local Floras, like yours of Victoria, & mine of Tasmania, be left wholly
to the Col. Govts to pay for if they please.
It is the same with Thomson & myself, we find we cannot further combine in publishing
— he in Calcutta & I in England. The correspondence is endless & the result most unsatisfactory.
Again too, I think if you were to work a little in this country you would see & feel
more deeply the extreme inconvenience of the provisional way you publish species —
it is from no desire of fault-finding that I remark this, but in justice to myself
— that I observe that the consultation of & reference to your fragmenta have cost
Mr Black
& myself more labor than the works of any other Botanist whatever — We have all of
us here your Botanical reputation deeply at heart & are rejoiced to see a carefully
wrought work like your great Victoria Flora, which will I doubt not do you lasting
credit as a Botanist & I would earnestly advise you to abandon the attempt to deal
with a tropical Flora for which you have neither materials library or knowledge to
work out properly. In the present advanced condition of scientific Botany errors in
identification of well known tropical genera & species are not held to be venial.
After all, the great question is, does such work advance science or not & no one can
work at a tropical Flora without full materials, except to the retardation of science.
I have at last finished my Flora of Tasmania,
but the printer works so slowly that it will be yet some weeks before it is all out
of hand. Meanwhile I am very busy with the Precursores Florae Indicae
in the Linnean Journal & with — various works at the Garden Herbarium & Libraries.
I sent you a large collection of named Indian plants the other day — but you must
remember that
except of species published by myself the names are not critical or authentic
. I have named them as best I can, to
aid
those who receive them but my identifications have no Pretensions to exactness. We
have also sent you another very large collection of Garden seeds all fresh & of all
sorts. —
Your box of
s arrived in first rate order & we are very much obliged for them, though unfortunately
they are now so extremely common in the country that we should have preferred ornamental
Victoria plants & especially alpines that might do out of doors or in conservatories.
We have also sent
& some other water plants but Mr Smith doubts whether at this season of year they
will reach you all alive.
We are extremely obliged & gratified by your kindness to poor Adamson it is a mystery
to us why he cannot get on in business. His Father was one of the most eminent merchants
in Glasgow & had a large family, almost all of whom are dead by some fatality or other.
Frederick was a school & college companion of mine, always a most steady & excellent
fellow, very fond of Botany — he set up in business in Glasgow & was I believe doing
well when he gave it up for Australia He was always very modest & diffident but I
cannot understand his utter want of success; as an old & valued friend of mine I have
a very high regard for him.
My Father is very well again & very active deeply interested in you & your work, but
overwhelmed with correspondence Harvey is hard at work on the Australian Phycologia
& Cape Flora.
Sonder does certain orders & not at all I fear in the same style as Harvey does his.
Archer sailed for Tasmania a month ago — We shall miss him very much here.
I have written to Berkeley about your Fungi. — many were I know studied by him when
doing the Tasmanian.
With regard to
Capsella
I have always felt disposed to keep
C. Bursa
as the only species & let
have seeds of both kinds, but it is quite a matter of choice.
I sent proof sheets of the Indian Australian plants
— but you will see by my note that it does not pretend to absolute accuracy.
Ever most sincerely yrs
Jos D Hooker
