The correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller: London Febr 26 1865 ¶ My dear Sir ¶ ¶ I received last night yours of the 24th Decr & by the previous mail your criticisms on my 2d vol. ¶ The enclosed bill for £5 came safe to hand. I have given the...

Document information

Physical location:

RB MSS M4, Library, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. 65.02.26

Plant names

Babingtonia
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Baeckea camphorata
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Baeckea microphylla
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Calythrix tetragona
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Chamaelaucieae
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Compositae
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Darwinia
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Eremopyxis
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Ericomyrtus
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Euphorbiaceae
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Euryomyrtus
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Harmogia
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Homalocalyx
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Imbricaria ciliata
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Jungia tenella
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Leguminosae
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Lhotzkya
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Loranthaceae
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Malvaceae
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Micromyrtus
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Monochlamydeae
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Myrtaceae
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Rinzia
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Santalaceae
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Schidiomyrtus
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Scholtzia decandra
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Scholtzia denticulata
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Sterculiaceae
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Tetrapora
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Thryptomene elobata
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Thryptomene plicata
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Thryptomene saxicola
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Verticordia
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Preferred Citation:

George Bentham to Ferdinand von Mueller, 1865-02-26. R.W. Home, Thomas A. Darragh, A.M. Lucas, Sara Maroske, D.M. Sinkora, J.H. Voigt and Monika Wells (eds), Correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, <https://vmcp.rbg.vic.gov.au/id/65-02-26>, accessed April 20, 2025

For a published extract from this letter, see Moyal (1976), p. 184.

London Febr 26 1865

My dear Sir

I received last night yours of the 24th Decr & by the previous mail your criticisms on my 2d vol.

Letter not found. The letter was evidently described to William Archer by Joseph Hooker. In W. Archer to W. Hooker, 22 May 1865, Archer wrote:

Dr Hooker's letter by the last mail was very welcome. I will endeavour to reply to it by the next mail. It is very sad that Mueller should so far forget himself as to write in the manner described by Dr Hooker to him & Bentham. You see, he is in Australia a Triton among minnows [Shakespeare, Coriolanus , III, 1, 88], and has but slender notions of larger aquatic beings in the great world in which he is not moving. — If he ever takes a voyage to Europe he will soon find out his mistakes, & will, also I trust, acknowledge them.— What he feels is that Bentham is crumpling up his botanical reputation, and he can't manage to find the process agreeable, — however necessary it may be. — It is a pity we have no ultimate standard of appeal. But if old Brown's ghost, excessively enlightened in the mysteries of terrestrial & infernal science, were to revisit the earth, bringing with him a complete herbarium of the flora of Hades, there are many botanists who would spurn his dicta, and say "Ah! That old fellow forgets the progress we have made since his day!" — Where everything in the way of definition depends upon such delicate observation of such delicate differences of structure, there must & will ever be great differences of opinion in the matter; for no two men would give the same description even of a haystack. (RBG Kew, Kew correspondence, Directors' letters vol. 75, Australian and Pacific letters 1859-65, letter no. 6). See also n. 7 below.

The enclosed bill for £5 came safe to hand. I have given the £1 you desire me to Dr Hooker leaving me thus a small balance in hand the exact amount I do not recollect as I forgot to bring the account with me from Kew yesterday. I beg to thank you — and will take care that the copies of the Flora Australiensis you ordered for Copenhagen and for Dr Beckler are discontinued.

In his letter of 24 December 1864 M wrote: 'It will not be necessary to forward in future any more copies of the flor. Austr. to Copenhagen, to Beckler or to any other place on my behalf, as I formerly desired, in as much as I am under no obligation to the recipients and find the distribution of works, maintained by me out of my private means for many years too ruinous to be continued.'

Mr Kippist tells me he has heard from you that you have instructed me to propose Mr Woolls as a Fellow of the Linnean Society.

Letter not found.

I do not however find any allusion to it in your letter to me — perhaps you have written to Dr Hooker. Mr Woolls has certainly shown himself well deserving of botanical honors and if we can find in any of your letters sufficient authority to do so, we shall propose him at our next meeting.

Woolls was elected on 4 May 1865.

I am much obliged to you for your corrections to my Flora which I note in my interleaved copy for the Supplement

The interleaved copy to which Bentham refers is preserved at Kew.

if ever life and health are spared to me to complete the work. We all commit blunders and make false determinations besides overlooking articles and observations scattered over the very extensive botanical litterature, and as I am very thankful to have mine pointed out and corrected, so I am accustomed to do the same to others without taking or ever dreaming of giving offence. With the extensive collections of authentic specimens at hand, we have superior means of identifying plants than many others, and therefore I have been more communicative about identifications than I ought to have been — but it was all with the best intentions and as to circumscription of genera and species it is now a settled thing that no two naturalists ever agree on the subject. I regret much however that you should have found reason to be so thoroughly dissatisfied with the execution of my second volume that you find my genera miserable, my distinction of species often ridiculous and my diagnoses unavailable for practical use.

Marginal annotation by M against this sentence: no F.M.

In his reply to this letter (M to G. Bentham, 21 April 1865), M writes apologetically: 'Surely I could not have said anything severe against the second volume of your work.'

I do my best and as I am now pledged to continue the work, I shall persevere as long as I am able and trust that notwithstanding my failure you will continue to give me your valuable assistance.

It seems to be a pity that your should have been placed in Baillon's hands before Mueller of Argau's contribution to the Prodromus is published

J. Müller (1866).

there is already so much "double emploi" in the Order. Baillon appears to me to be very accurate in his observations but without any idea of method, and then he has no good library to work in Mueller on the other hand has taken the greatest pains to verify his species and references he has worked in an excellent school with the use of the most complete library and far richer collections than Baillon, besides that he expressly visited and examined the herbaria of Paris Kew and London and as far as I have seen has prepared an excellent monograph which I believe will now appear before long. As it is however Baillon will be put to his mettle and will no doubt bestow more pains on your plants than he has on some others that he has too hastily published

Since I last wrote in December

Letter not found.

I have been much impeded in my work by family matters and especially sickness and death amongst my nearest relations

Bentham's sisters Mary and Sarah were both ill in the last months of 1864 and Sarah died on 27 December. Mary rallied temporarily but died in March 1865. See B. Jackson (1906), pp. 199, 201.

I am also much taken up with the proofs of for Genera Plantarum. I have however nearly finished and Beckea and in a box just sent from Kew I have had put in your parcels of Calythrix and small genera of but have kept back the one which contained Thryptomene & until I have finished Baeckea with which as you know the former is so closely connected. These plants have taken me very much longer than I anticipated. It was bad enough with Calythrix which I found impossible to determine without analyzing flowers of more than 150 specimens, the internal structure of the calyx not always to be judged of from the outside forming in my opinion one of the best specific characters — in some the narrow neck is solid with the style [inserted] on the disk at the top and often articulate, in others the neck is a tube with the style free within it, and in C. tetragona in the synonymy of which I quite agree with you the form of the calyx tube is different from that of every other species. Upon these I spent 6 hours a day for nearly three weeks — but when I came to Baeckea & its allies it was much worse. Besides all yours the number of specimens and forms we have from Drummond and others appear to be endless, and as in Drummonds specimens especially there are usually plenty of flowers I have repeated my analysis of their minute parts over and over again before I could be satisfied — As you say the passage from Thryptomene to Baeckea is very gradual. Schauers genera, I agree with you, are good for nothing. He has generally taken his characters from one species and added others without examining them — but I have been unable to find definite characters without adopting rather more genera than you have — that is 1. Thryptomene 2. F. Muell. with the ovary of Thryptomene ([placenta] with a basal or lateral placenta) but the deciduous petals and pluriceriate stamens of Calythrix & . 3. a new genus for Sm. ( Sieb (but not Gaertn) Baeckea or F Muell) and three or four others which have the calyx petals and stamens of some Baeckeas, […]

two illegible words.

locular ovary but the placenta as in Calythrix & is filiform extending from the base to the top of the cavity (being I should think a rudimentary dissepiment) with the ovules suspended from the summit — I was in hopes this genus might have been the of Baillon — but I find that his plant — most accurately described, is not uncommon in botanic gardens and which by some mistake must be labelled at Paris instead of B. saxicola a mistake which the slightest glance at the figures of the plants would have enabled Baillon to detect at once. If I do not find any name already given to this genus I propose to call it . 4 Scholtzia, a still further step towards Baeckea the ovary being usually completely 2 locular with 2 superposed ovules in each cell. In a species from Sharks Bay however the dissepiment appears to me to be incomplete, but very little more than the filiform placenta of but with 2 superposed ovules on each side, and the style inserted in a tubular depression in the centre of the ovary as in Scholtzia and most Baeckeas. It appears to me that S. decandra and S. denticulata must be refered to Thryptomene the former being the true T. saxicola Schau[.] 5 Baeckea in which with you I would include [and] & Schau and Turcz, probably also Schau which I have not yet seen. It is true that the anthers may well divide the genus into two and Baeckea but they are too little naturally different as far as I now see to be considered as more than sections. In all this however I may change my mind again before I have done — I am now getting quite tired of these troublesome little flowers

will probably occupy me for several months yet — I may be mistaken about getting into vol. lll but I am pledged to make it a thick one. I must contrive to get in about 700 pages and about 1400 species — I cannot think of — if not in they go next to & — I think must go down to next to . If as you say there are not above 100 Eucalypti must I suppose be estimated at about 700 and allowing 200 for the smaller families would leave 500 for — but it is impossible to estimate numbers till they are worked up. Of Scholtzia & Baeckea I now make up nearly 180. If therefore I get your next boxes in October it will be time enough — I shall scarcely begin printing till the end of the year

Ever yours very truly

George Bentham

Dr F. Mueller