Ferdinand von Mueller

1

MS annotation by Hooker: 'Answd May 17/67'. Letter not found.

22/2/67

It is quite right, dear Dr Hooker, that you should decline to send any fungi to Mr Smith, but I should have imagined he was a well established observer.

2

See M to J. Hooker, 9 September 1866, and J. Hooker to M, 23 October 1866.

I have for a dozen of years sent all my fungi (though perhaps not very many) to your rev. & illustr. friend, but not one diagnosis of them is published nor can I trace any record of any species, sent by me, in any of Berkeley's publications. All the great Mycologist did was to name some, while it would have been to his experience so easy to give an enumeration & to define the few new species. He did me the honor of coupling in the names my name with his as authority though I only gave the generic name. When sending lately some very rare & remarkable fungi from the N.E. coast, I adressed them to Berkeley, under your care. Should the excellent man have advanced too far in age to continue promoting Mycology or should he be so overwhelmed with work as to be unable to attend to any of my sendings, pray send these fungi then to Dr Sonder, when you next convey Cape plants to that Gentleman.

3

W. Sonder had published Flora capensis with William Harvey (see Harvey & Sonder (1859-65)), and remained interested in the plants of the Cape Colony.

Later in life & under anticipated greater tranquility, when once the department shall here have been well consolidated, I trust to study the fungi on the spot, but this will probably not be in time for Bentham's work.

4

Bentham (1863-78).

Pray give me credit that I do not intentionally wish to hurt any ones feeling, & though I may be impulsive and perhaps even occasionally not guarded in my expressions, I have the manly straightforwardness of always without ceremony expressing my opinion, and errors in this direction are much more pardonable than those in an other. It seems two cases of live plants from you are in the Bay. This will be glorious, if they are safe. I will let you know ere the mail closes.

You say all the plants, of which I lately sent seeds, are at Kew!

5

No surviving letter of Hooker's includes such a statement.

But really, dear & good Dr Hooker, how have I to know it in the absense of a catalogue of Kew & in the absense of any illustration of such plants in the Bot. Mag.? This brings me once more to the question, can or cannot a catalogue of all known plants be published, according to Steudel's method.

6

Presumably Steudel (1840-1).

Such a book might be made the basis of all Garden exchanges, as useless homonyms could be banished from it. Such a book would sell well & relieve us of the trouble of eternal renewal of our catalogues. Pritzel would be the best perhaps to do it. Could not a few influential Botanists ask him? The work might be published in parts, thus for annuals, for Orchids & other conservatory plants, for ferns, for hardy trees & shrubs &c.

Eucalyptus amygdalina

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has been measured in our ranges 480' high, thus higher than the Strassburg Münster and as high as the great pyramid!

7

See also B67.02.01.

I have given a statistic of 950 Australian trees & tabulated them geographically for my rather hurriedly written report & essay for the Exhibition.

8

B67.13.02.

Are no records of a reliable nature extant respecting the

Wellingtonia

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s hight? In "the treasures of Botany" the very fact of giving the mutilated stem at precisely 300' shows that the measurement has been made at random.

9

Lindley and Moore (1866), p. 1051, estimating a height of 450’ based on the broken trunk at 300’.

I have now the Bombyx Cynthia & the Coccus Cacti in my Garden.

10

Bombyx cynthia is a silk moth; Coccus cacti (now Dactylopius coccus), a scale insect, is the source of cochineal.