Document information

Physical location:

Gray Herbarium Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 65.00.00a

Preferred Citation:

Ferdinand von Mueller to Asa Gray, 1865 [65.00.00a]. 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/1860-9/1865/65-00-00a-final.odt>, accessed June 10, 2026

1
Item tentatively dated to late 1865 since the content suggests it is probably to be placed between M's letters to Gray of 23 August 1865 and 24 January 1866.
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2
Unknown amount of text missing. MS occupies four pages, each with one irregular margin; the sequence of the text given is based in the assumption that the four originally comprised a single folded sheet, now torn on the centre fold.
and needing description. Your & Prof Brewer's examination of the plants from the highlands of California must prove delightfully entertaining.
3
W. H. Brewer was botanical collector for the Geological Survey of California, 1860-64, before returning to the US east coast as professor of agriculture at Yale University.
So gradually we become acquainted with all the organic forms of the globe. In Australia we know now 9000 of the 10,000 plants which constitute its flora. You have been so generous to my establishment, that it would be an abuse of your kindness were I to ask for anything more. Yet I venture to remark, that I am striving to render our State herbarium, to which I made my own a donation, as large as I can. I commenced collecting at my 14th year in Denmark.
4
i.e. in Schleswig-Holstein, then a part of Denmark.
Dr. Steetz collection I purchased & I have interchanged since 20 years with bot friends. By these efforts I have accumulated about 300,000 specimens & can therefore work here locally with comparative independence.
Ever with profound veneration your
Ferd. Mueller
Through Dr. Sonder you will have received the atlas of Victorian plants
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B65.02.06.
& the 4. vol. of the Fragmenta.
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B65.02.09.
The little book on the Chatham island vegetation
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B64.10.02.
must have reached you before. It is antidarwinian in its tendency. The glorious Martius deemed its announcements of sufficient importance to render them a topic for a discourse at the Munich Academy.
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The volume was announced as received in Sitzungsberichte der Königl. Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München, Jahrgang 1865, Band 1, p. 303.
If you desire it I could readily send a large cask of crudely dried algae, if any American phycographer deems it worthy of his trouble to prepare the specimina there. Is there any book or document I can send to your Academy? or any specimens? and do I right in transmitting (in absense of direct opportunity) via London?
I have taken the liberty of sending to your care a small parcel for Colonel Warren in San Francisco.
9
I have … San Fransciso written on left-hand margin of sheet.