2/[3]/80.
In first instance, dear Professor Owen, let me thank you for your generous thoughts
and wishes, bestowed on me in your letter of newyears day;
and accept also my grateful recognition of your kindness of sending me your photogram,
which shall receive a place of honor in the book of photographic cartes of illustrious
friends. I am quite proud of this picture from your own hand, and that I am thus brought
vis à vis to you. It is now too late to offer also to yourself a newyears-gratulation,
but it is not too late perhaps to offer my felicitation to you for the new decennium.
May you live throught it in unimpaired health and in that freshness of mind, which
you still enjoy at your venerable age, and may you thus at the serene evening of a
labourious life enjoy long the triumphs, which you gained so gloriously on the fields
of science! — New measures are taken by me to secure more specimens of the monotrems
& at last in the various stages of gestation. Dr Bennett
& Sir Samuel Wilson are also trying to acquire the needful material for you; so I
trust some one of us may at last be fully successful.
I feel also indebted for your information through Mr Waterhouse concerning the
Dorthesia
.
Though in danger to be troublesome I venture to send now a minute hemipterous insect,
which Mr Otto Tepper on St Vincents Gulf
has found to produce saccharine secretions on
Eucalypts
. We are eager to have the exact identification with any described species through
your kind mediation. It seems closely akin to a species, found by Mr Dobson near Hobarton,
and of which he has given an account in the vol. of the R.S. of Tasmania of 1851.
As yet I have been unsuccessful to trace positively the insect which produces the
Melitose-Sugar on Euc. viminalis, according to Mr [A] Marshall probably a black Cercopis
with white transparent spots, but some day I may venture to invoke the aid of your
grand establishment to settle this from specimens to be submitted
Herewith I beg to send the commencement of a new number of the
Fragmenta
, in which a new
is described.
This particular additional congener is — unlike the others, — a mighty forest-tree,
and its timber is so excellent, that it is largely brought into the market as similar
to that of our famous
. My having established this meliaceous genus (of which possibly as in the case of
) yet members may be found in New Guinea, ought not to interfere with creating for
you a grand generic monument in Zoology, as such might be named
Owena
or
Owenea
.
And now, honored and venerable Sir, let me remain with the wishes for your happiness
your regardful
Ferd von Mueller.
The species of Eucalyptus, on which this Psylla-like Sugar Insect occurs, is my E.
oleosa; on any of the other shrubby Mallee-Species it was not noticed, but "Lerp"
again occurs on E. Gracilis only or chiefly, according to Mr Tepper. Another minute
insect, occuring on E. oleosa, is sent herewith.
