Document information
Physical location:
RB MSS 439c, Library, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. 70.00.00Preferred Citation:
Ferdinand von Mueller to William Guilfoyle, 1870. 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/70-00-00>, accessed July 19, 2025
1
M does not indicate whether he is writing to William Guilfoyle or his father, Michael. However, M's reference to 'your father's and your able management' indicates that he was addressing the son. Michael Guilfoyle was at the time trying to float a company to erect a sugar mill near his property in the Tweed River
district in northern NSW. The letter is dated to 1870 because Michael Guilfoyle seems to have conceived the idea of growing sugar cane and erecting a mill soon after he settled at the Tweed in November 1869. See R. Pescott (1974), pp. 55-6.
I feel quite touched with your great consideration and kindness, dear Mr Guilfoyle,
in giving me an opportunity to join in the very auspicious and promising enterprise
detailed in your draft prospectus.
My wordly
affairs however have gone under the present administration of the Ministry here entirely
to ruin, and as since my early orphanage I have never yet incurred debts or monetary
obligations, I am now also unable, after all my property (some years ago considerable)
is gone, to share in your enterprise, feeling however that under your fathers and
your able management it will become a source of lucrative prosperity to you all.
2
Prospectus not found.
3
worldly?
I will show the prospectus to such wealthy and speculative friends, as I may see soon.
The Dicksonias of the Tweed,
of which you sent fragments & fronds, is Dicksonia Youngiana of Moore, Sir Will Hooker
and Mr Baker regard it as identical with D. squarrosa Sw. of N. Zealand.
I think myself, that both are varieties of one species, but I have had no chance of
examining either in their native locality.
4
Tweed River, NSW.
5
W. Hooker & Baker (1865-8) (i.e. December 1866, see p. 482), p. 51, cite D. youngiae as a MS name by Charles Moore and slightly paraphrase part of Moore's descriptive
label (K 1090426), but treat it as a synonym of D. squarrosa. Moore used D. youngii on the specimen label and when he sent specimens to the nurseryman Veitch of Chelsea.
Veitch showed the species using Moore's name at a Royal Horticultural Society event
on 21 March 1865 (Proceedings of the Royal Horticultural Society London, vol. 5 (1865), p. 66, reporting that it was 'named as a compliment to Sir Charles (sic) Young'. However,
the descriptive label at Kew ends with a dedication, 'Believing this to be a new species
I have named in honour of Lady Young the wife of the Governor'; thus Hooker & Baker
have changed the word ending to that appropriate for a female dedicatee.
Baker (1868), p. 14 treats D. youngiae as a variety of D. squarrosa, and in the second edition of W. Hooker & Baker (1874), p. 461 it is considered a distinct species.
The Pittosporum like tree is my Emmenospermum alphitonoides
(among Rhamnaceae) or an allied species. Your specimen is not sufficient for identification
6
Described as
Emmenosperma
alphitonoides
in B62.09.01, p. 63.
[…]
7
An unknown amount of text missing. A page of the MS has been torn off. A small part
of a marginal addition by M can be seen at the edge on the torn side and the remaining MS carries the marginal addition by M: '[…] advise to Dr Hooker'.
Dicksonia squarrosa
Dicksonia youngiana
Emmenospermum alphitonoides
Pittosporum
Rhamnaceae