Ferdinand von Mueller

29/3/64.

Dear Sir.

After the receipt of your letter of yesterday I have met Dr Ellery and pointed out to that Gentleman, that all the documents & information desired by you for your adress are readily accessible in the minute book of the Royal society, and that all other documents are kept at the Hall in a box. Having the draft of the Councils report here I beg to enclose it, though it like all other principle documents is copied into the Minute Book.

1

At the Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Society of Victoria held on 14 March 1864, M stood down as Secretary, having taken over this position the previous July following the resignation of R. B. Smyth. McCoy was elected President, and was evidently working on his Presidential Address.

In reference to the labour carried on in the scientific branch of my department I might observe, that during the last year a portion of the 2. vol. of "the plants indigenous to Victoria" & the greater part of the 4th volume of the "fragmenta phytographiae Australiae" has been printed, so that deo volente

2

God willing.

both will appear in 1864. For the second volume of the Universal flora of Australia, in the publication of which I cooperate with the President of the Linnean Society, all the material from my museum required for the second volume has been placed at Mr Benthams disposal during the year 1863, and hence this volume which will embrace amongst other orders the Myrtaceae & Leguminosae (both so important as comprising most of your timber trees) is likely to be issued about the middle of this year. Possibly I may also edit very soon a series of illustrations of Australian mosses, of which the plates are finished since some time & furthermore the majority of the plates for the "plants of Victoria" are completed.

The herbarium of my department has also during the last year vastly increased, amongst the additions the most important being the collection of my late friend the Dr Joachim Steetz of Hamburg. The whole Herbarium of the Melbourne bot Museum comprises now nearly 2000 fascicles, and approximately 200,000 specimens, the number of species being in the present state of phytography not even approximately ascertainable. The final arrangement of this huge collection will (si fata velint

3

if the fates are willing.

) be completed in the course of this year.

4

Text ends at the bottom of the page, without valediction. McCoy included the information M provided about his own work, though not verbatim, in his Presidential Address to the Royal Society of Victoria on 25 April 1864; see Transactions and proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, vol. 6 (1861-4), pp. xciv-xcv.