Document information

Physical location:

RBG Kew, Kew correspondence, Australia, Mueller, 1858-70, un-numbered folio after f. 44. 59.11.15

Plant names

Preferred Citation:

Ferdinand von Mueller to Joseph Hooker, 1859-11-15. 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//letters/1850-9/1859/59-11-15-final.odt>, accessed June 4, 2026

Melbourne bot. & zool
Garden, 15 Nov. 59
My dear Dr Hooker.
I cannot express to you how sorry I felt to hear of the long sufferings of your very venerable father, receiving only of his illness information yesterday by your & Dr Harveys letters.
1
Letters not found.
Altho' I had never the good fortune & enjoyment to [near] myself personally to him, nor even possess what I often endeavoured to obtain, his portrait, — yet his [manner], his works, his attachment to friends, his encouragement to followers of his path, are always as an ideal before my mind, & all that may afflict the venerable sage will have a still deeper echo in my heart, than the enjoyments which I feel with & for him. — May he be led to full health again & be long spared us yet! —
Let me thank you for your kind attention to my wishes, altho' they have been but partially realized. I have placed £1000 on the estimates of my department for the elaboration of an Universal Australian Flora in 1860 & trust the sum will be granted. There are also £320 for enabling me to go on with the illustration[s] of the plants of Victoria of which now 27 are ready, illustrating as many orders. Had it not been for the necessity of retaining a fixed appointment here, which I cannot hold, when going to Europe, and that hereditary tuberculosis banished me from my lovely native country (both my parents having died early of pulmonary consumption), I would have responded to your fathers call & have come long since to Kew. Having no private property of freehold, & all I had since the last 20 years expended in my library & collections, it was even disregarding my health a too venturesome undertaking.
However the Flora is now in the hands of the best botanist for such a purpose & shall have my disinterested support, & whilst I am here keeping up a correspondence with very many collectors & am directing their labours, I may furnish, — si fata relint
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if the fates allow.
— yet many additional contribution. The 8 No of my Fragmenta
3
B59.11.01.
is a proof of this.
4
The 8 No … proof of this. is marked by a vertical line and annotated: ' support '.
I shall of course steadily proceed with "the plants of Victoria" and the "Fragmenta" and the former will probably always be ahead of Mr Bentham's works so that my views of orders, genera & species can always be consulted by Mr Bentham before, Brown's
5
Robert Brown (1773-1858).
species having to be reduced by ¼ or ⅓! The proof sheets will be by every mail in Kew. I have finished now the
Droseraceae

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, — It may not be out of place once more to remind Mr Bentham, that the Flora should not embody any synonymns unless they were published with diagnosis. That in my conception is the grand distinction which should be drawn between admissable and unaceptable synonymy.
I have lately received valuable contributions from the active & generous Drs Asa Gray, H[eward]
6
Another possible reading is 'Howard', but the most likely name is Robert Heward, who was one of the signatories of M's Linnean Society nomination (W. Hooker and others to the Linnean Society of London, 4 November 1858 (in this edition as M58-11-04)) and was mentioned again in a similar context in M to W. Hooker, 17 May 1860. See footnotes to M to W. Hooker, 14 June 1858.
MEL has a number of specimens recorded in AVH as collected by Robert Heward, including some from NSW and WA which he himself never visited. These specimens may have been collected by Alan Cunningham whose collections Heward inherited, although there is no mention of them in Orchard (2014).Those from Asa Gray and George Thwaites are from areas in which they are known to have visited.
& Mr Thwaites,
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M apparently promised Thwaites Australian plants in return; see G. Thwaites to J. Hooker, 14 January 1860 (RBG Kew, Directors' correspondence 162/123).
which have permitted me in some instances to examine critically some of my northern plants. A very much greater aid an aid which I will publicly acknowledge, will be to me your index of Indo-Australian plants,
8
See J. Hooker to M, 20 December 1858.
in publishing some of my manuscripts. I have from Dr Milligan received lately a specimen of R. nanus; it is in my humble opinion a pygmy state of
Ranunculus lappaceus

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. The latter is probably the same as R. aureus Schleicher, which I have however not in fruit. Would you not compare it with your specimens. It may finally settle the question, whether the species is or is not cosmopolitan. Browns
Hydrocotyle vulgaris

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is evidently H. interrupta Muehlen[berg]. You will have observed by last letters, that I transferred the dubious plant of
Balanophorae

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to
Loranthaceae

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.
9
See M to W. Hooker, 15 April 1859, and M to W. Hooker, 11 July 1859.
With my best wishes for Sir William and yourself & an ardent desire often to hear of you, I remain, my dear Dr Hooker,
your truly attached
Ferd. Mueller
I have now Mr Stuarts plants from the N.W. interior of South Australia before me; and will report thereon. It contains 12 new species and one or two genera. A remarkably beautiful & singular
Goodenia

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is amongst them.
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Presumably G. nicholsonii (B59.12.01).