Ferdinand von Mueller

25, WILTON PLACE. S.W .

London

Sept. 24 1871

My dear Sir

It is long since I have written to you although I have to thank you for two or three letters — but I have been away and much taken up with family matters. I have now regularly resumed work. I have still the

Cichoraceae

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Cichoriaceae?

to do for Genera Plantarum

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Bentham & Hooker (1862-83), vol. 2, pp. 504-33.

and to finish off a few other portions but by the time you receive this I trust I shall be at Flora Australiensis again. I should therefore be much obliged to you to forward to me any further materials you may have for the remaining Dicotyledonous Orders and for the first Monocotlyedon (Palms,

Pandaneae

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Aroideae

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Apocarpous acquatic orders &c) which I have no doubt will have to come in to the 6th vol.

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Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6 did not include these Orders, which were included in vol. 7.

I should also feel obliged if in the course of the winter or spring (your summer or autumn) you would apply for the £100 for the 6th vol.

I trust from your last letters that you are getting more comfortable in your official position.

I observe you take Reichenbach to task for finding fault with Fitch

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Bentham is probably responding to B71.07.01, p. 135 — M's defence of the quality of Finch's illustrations, heavily criticised in Reichenbach (1871) — rather than to a letter to Bentham. See M to G. Bentham, November 1871 (in this edition as 71-11-00b), and M to J. Hooker, 12 August 1872 (in this edition as 72-08-12a) and notes thereto.

Reichenbach expresses himself too strongly but is not altogether wrong Fitch is an excellent draughtsman but is not to be trusted for analytical details without close supervision. I who cannot draw myself and employ him a good deal have full experience of the trouble there is sometimes to make him see things right — all not for want of talent for his is first rate but for want of being botanist enough to understand what he draws. This must be borne in mind when occasionally descriptions do not quite tally with his figures

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For example, Reichenbach (1871), p. 65, commenting on Fitch's depiction of Caladenia carnea, wrote '"carnea" non videtur carnea! "congesta" non congesta! "alata" non alata! "angustata" non angustata!'.

— an annoying circumstance to botanists of Reichenbach's somewhat irritable temper. Similar incorrect analyses are frequent in the plates of Heyland whom the elder De Candolle employed so much and whom he thought so highly of — In Delessert's Icones

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Delessert (1820-46).

it is easy to contrast Heylands careless with Decaisnes admirable analyses — and some of Fitch's are really as bad as Heyland's although his drawing is so much better.

Dr Ferd Mueller