Document information
Physical location:
RB MSS M2, Library, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. 56.02.02Preferred Citation:
William Hooker to Ferdinand von Mueller, 1856-02-02. 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/56-02-02>, accessed May 18, 2024
1
MS envelope front: 'On H. M. service | Dr Ferd. Mueller | Botanist | N. Australian
Expedn | favor of the Colonial Office. | (W. J. Hooker).'. Back is sealed: 'Royal
Garden Kew | Director'. For a published version of this letter see Daley (1927-8),
p. 69.
Feb. 2. 1856.
My dear Dr Mueller,
Where or when this will reach your hands, I do not know: — but I send it through the
best channel, through the Colonial Office. I wish you to see that we are doing the
best we can to bring your exertions & important labors in the cause of science into
notice. The Secretary of State for the Colonies, Mr Labouchere, highly approves of
my publishing notices from the communications I receive from you relating to your
success & progress, & I send him & other official people (Sir W. Denison for example)
copies as they appear. Dr Hooker & I are thus issuing 2 series, if I may so say, of
your labors, I. the new & rare Victoria Plants,
& 2. the particulars, or rather generalizations of your North-western journies.
And with such we have begun the new vol. of the Journal of 1856, & shall continue
to do so as health & time & the information we receive from you, may allow.
2
B55.08.01 and B55.12.03, B55.12.02, B56.01.02.
3
B56.01.01, B56.02.01, B56.11.01.
I should be deeply sorry if anything should prevent your visit to Europe soon after
the present Explorations are finished. Should your worst fears be realized, viz that the absence of high mountains may occasion
a scanty vegetation or a vegetation analogous to adjacent intra-tropical & maritime
regions: yet the geographical limits or distribution, subjects that you never neglect,
— & your great ardour & enthusiasm which will leave no species, phanerogam or Cryptogam,
uncollected & unrecorded: — all this must lead to very important results: & it is
no small matter in your favor that you are so familiar with the vegetation of the
extreme South of the same island (for you are on
one & the same
piece of circumscribed insulated ground), — that you have yourself touched here &
there on the East coast, that much of the west is familiar to you by Drummond & Preiss
&c — & now you are in the extreme north of that fine, immense island! Let me say too
that the few plants I have from Stokes (gathered by Bynoe) are new & curious: & the
interior plants will be found more peculiar than the coast ones. God grant you health
& freedom from accidents & I have no fear of your success. — Your collections, from
the mouth of the Victoria river, as you were on the point of landing, have all come
safe & were immediately dispatched here by the Secretary of the Colonies, & are undergoing
as careful an investigation as will be necessary to make such a
Report
as shall be sufficiently free from errors without abstracting from the novelty of
your undertaking on your visit to Europe.
4
See M to W. Hooker, 22 July 1855, on plants M collected during his brief stay in Sydney.
With the heartiest good wishes from Dr Hooker and myself,
believe me,
your faithful & affecte
W. J. Hooker.