Ferdinand von Mueller

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MS annotated: 'No action necessary'. See also M to J. Service, 15 May 1883, and M to E. Thomas, 19 May 1883.

Arnold Street, 17/5/83.

To Mr E. Thomas,

Private Secretary of the honorable James Service,

Premier and Treasurer.

Sir.

In reply to your note of yesterday

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Letter not found.

I beg to inform the hon. James Service, that of the "Fragmenta phytographiae Australiae" no copies are supplied to the Melbourne or any other press . — This work, written like Bentham's and Hooker's "genera plantarum"

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Bentham & Hooker (1862-83).

professionally in a language common to science of all nations, was never intended for the general public, but strictly reserved by me for departmental use in literary interchanges or in encouragement of amateur-contributors to our botanic collections. If at any time notices of the Fragmenta did occur in newspapers either here or elsewhere, they did not emanate from any departmental or direct action of mine, though occasionally some recipients of any portion of the work may have referred to it in the press here or elsewhere on their own impulse. Should the honor. the Premier desire it, copies will in future be sent to the Melbourne daily papers, as recently has been done with the "systematic Census of Australian plants"

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B83.03.04.

and formerly with some others of my works.

In replying to the honor. Mr Service's note on the 15th, I was inadvertently wrong in stating, that I received 100 copies of the "Fragmenta" bound and 25 successively in stitched parts as they appeared. I have since learnt from my Assistant, that in later years we had received also 100 copies of the loose parts, altho' (so far as my memory carries me) we got only 25 copies of the separate unbound parts of the earlier volumes, the larger later requirements having arisen from the gradually augmented demands by botanic correspondents now nearly all over Australia and also widely abroad.