Document information

Physical location:

VPRS 5834/PO/3, inward correspondence p. 15, VA 1411 Industrial and Technological Museum, Public Record Office, Victoria. 72.09.05

Preferred Citation:

Ferdinand von Mueller to William Vale, 1872-09-05. 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/72-09-05>, accessed September 11, 2025

Melbourne bot. Garden
5/9/72.
1
For reply see M. Clarke to M, 6 September 1872 (in this edition as 72-09-06a), and M. Clarke to M, 21 September 1872 (in this edition as 72-09-21a).
Honorable Sir.
I observe in the journals just issued, that you desire any medals, awarded to me, to be placed into the Industrial Museum.
2
In the debate on the estimates for the Botanical Garden in the Legislative Assembly on 3 September 1872, William Vale said that ‘he was astonished that the Government should have allowed public officers in various departments to receive and appropriate to themselves prize medals for work and for articles exhibited which were the property of the Government. These medals did not belong to those individuals, but to the Government, and should have been placed in the public museum’ (Argus, 4 September 1872, p. 6, col. c).
With the greatest readiness I comply with your request, more particularly as I have no family, and scarcely ever any opportunity to show these tokens of kindness to any one. Accordingly I have placed all the medals, which I have, now into a case, left under your adress at the Industrial Museum, of which you are a trustee.
The decorations, graciously conferred on me by Sovereigns, it would not be proper to place in the Museum, as most of these insignia have to be returned after my death to the thrones, from which I received them.
Respectfully your
Ferd von Mueller
Two large Exhibition Medals, Melbourne, 1866–1867.
1 Large Silver and 1 large Bronze Medal, Sydney, 1870.
2 Bronze Medals, London, 1862.
1 Bronze Medal, Royal Hort. Soc. Lond., 1862.
3
According to the report in Proceedings of the Royal Horticultural Society, vol. 2 (1862), p. 753, this medal was awarded to 'The commissioners for the Colony of Victoria', not to M personally.
1 Bronze Medal, Melbourne, 1854.
1 Bronze Medal, Brisbane, 1866.
1 Galileo Silver Medal, 1870.
4
Awarded by the Reale Museo di Fisica e Storia Naturale, Florence.
1 Gold Medal, Petersburg Exhibition, 1869.
1 Bronze Martius Medal, 1864.
1 - - smaller, 1864.
5
Two separate medals were issued in Munich in 1864 to mark the 50th anniversary of Martius's doctorate, one by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and a rather grander one as the result of a public subscription (Wesche (1997)).
1 Hooker Medallion
6
Issued privately by the Hooker family as a memento of William Hooker; see M to J. Hooker, 6 November 1868 (in this edition as 68-11-06a).
1 Silver Medal, Pa[ris] Exhibition, 1867
1 Victorian Exhibition Seal 1862
1 Berzelius Bronze Medal; In all: […]
7
Cut off by binding.
I may add, that my participation in Exhibitions was never [with] a view of competing f[or] prizes, and that in all instances these [Ex]hibitions involved la[rge] expenditures from my private resources.
B.V.M.