Ferdinand von Mueller

Melbourne botanic Garden,

5/12/1863.

My dear Miss Euphemia

Neither Mr Heyne nor myself noticed you in the crowd of visitors to the botanic Garden this day week; so I suppose you did not attend. I should have called at your residence long before this, felt I not some delicacy in thus intruding on you. I trust however that you will afford me the pleasure of hearing periodically from you, and if you wish me to carry out anything for you at any time, pray command my services. When you return to Phillip Island, perhaps you will be so kind to secure me a few more algae in a crudely dried state.

Should you write to your sister, pray let Mr M'Haffie be informed of my great desire to regain his friendly feelings. If he conceded to me the privilege of an interview, I have no doubt, that in a full verbal explanation I could clear up many points to him hitherto a mystery or on which I am likely to be misjudged.

Above all you will be so kind to remark, that nothing could have been farther from me, than to offer an offence to his family in soliciting as I did that our mutual former relation might be changed into genuine friendship. The unfriendly tendency of Mr & Mrs M'Haffie, however much on my part they may have been deserved, cannot but tend much to render our reflections more bitter than the

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they?

otherwise in course of time would be, and I therefore hope that they finally forgive the trouble & misery I have caused, if not out of consideration to myself, at least on general principles of christian charity.

I beg to send herewith a copy of the Exhibition Catalogue for Mr M'Haffie, in which his contributions are recorded. I have two copies, so I hope he will accept this, to which more than ordinary interest attaches itself.

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The catalogue of the 1861 Melbourne Exhibition? This records (p. 284), the award to McHaffie of an Honorable Mention in Class III, ‘Indigenous Vegetable Products, and the Manufactures and Processes connected therewith’, for ‘Specimens of Colonial Woods’.

Trusting to have once more an opportunity of seeing you before you depart I remain, dear Miss Euphemia, with friendship