Ferdinand von Mueller

Melbourne bot. Garden

24 Aug. 64

My dear Professor

The Chevalier Biagi very kindly brought me the seeds and the publications, which you were pleased to send to my establishment & for which I tender you my best thanks. I also have to be grateful for the friendly lines you adressed to me.

1

Letter not found.

It will afford me much pleasure to respond to your request & I will endeavour to send at an early date all the articles you desire for your museum.

These have to be sent by clipper ship to London & will be entrusted there to the Italian Consul. Meanwhile I have forwarded to his Italian Majestys Consul in Alexandria by this months mail a parcel with 42 spec. Australian seeds, some seeds of the rapidly growing Eucalyptus Globulus 1-3 vol. fragmenta phyt. Austr.

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B60.02.04, B62.02.03, B63.04.06.

vol I plants of Victoria

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B62.03.03.

to yourself, and on behalf of the Royal Society of Victoria 6 volumes of their transactions for the Academy of Florence.

Signor Biagi has kindly asked the Consul at Alexandria to forward the parcel to you, there being by the liberality of the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company no freight charged as far as Alexandria.

The transmission of these books is a mere trifle in comparison to what by the grace of his majesty the King of Italy has been presented to the Melbourne Library.

4

The King's donations are listed in The catalogue of donations to the Public Library of Victoria, from 1856 to 1872 (Melbourne, 1873), p. 111.

But a special consignment of books in reciprocation of the handsome gift from your Government will be forwarded by ours.

5

'Seven handsomely bound volumes … [which] will bear testimony to our skill in book-making' (The Australian news for home readers, 23 February 1865, p. 5). The first three volumes of M's Fragmenta, bound as one volume, and a specially bound copy of B62.03.02 were included in the set. See Darragh & Lucas (2015), pp. 305-6.

Allow me to remark, that the Eucalyptus seedlings require to be transplanted when very young (when but very few inches high) and this can only be done out of pots in cool wet weather. If this precaution is taken, the quantity of seeds sent will be sufficient to raise several thousand trees. I will gladly send you more seeds, as the tree will be of importance to Italy hereafter for shipbuilding, and for this purpose the government of France has caused it to be planted extensively in Algeria. I believe it is the most rapidly growing of all plants in existence & at the same time one of the highest dimensions.

I was much pleased with your remarks on Darwin's theory, and fully concur in your views.

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Parlatore (1863).

Species have been created by a supreme being not by accident; have never changed since the creation day & will never change until this epoch has ceased. But species have been misunderstood by most of our even more luminous observers, and the true limits of them are as yet very imperfectly known. The fact of varieties having been mistaken for species have le[d] to the dangerous doctrine that no species exist and that this is a gradual blending from one to the other. I instance that we have only one Epilobium in the southern hemisphere (E. tetragonum) but we have not a single other onagreous plant mediating the transmutation of this Epilobium into any other plant. In my new work on the plants of the Chatham Islands

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B64.10.02.

(a group formerly almost phytologically unknown) I shall pronounce my view on this important question.

When can we hope to receive your great work on the

Coniferae

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?

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M was presumably inquiring about the progress of the monograph that eventually appeared as Parlatore (1868); Parlatore (1864), of which there is a reprint in the library at MEL, is a preparatory anatomical study of the flowers and fruit of conifers.

Allow me, dear Professor, to offer you my humble effigies with a solicitation of receiving yours for my collection of those of befriended great coetans

I hope the Cygnus nigers of which I sent on behalf of our Acclimation Society several pair to your government for naturalisation in Italy have safely arrived.

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The black swans arrived; see F. Parlatore to M, August 1864 (in this edition as 64-08-00b).