Ferdinand von Mueller

Daily telegraph (Melbourne), 3 June 1870, p. 2: 'Poets in their fits of melancholy take to taming hares; the gentle Cowper, to wit. Saturnine journalists take to planting cinchona trees — when they can get them. It will be remembered how nothing but a cinchona plantation, and a cinchona plantation at Mount Macedon, would satisfy one of their number. We called the attention of Parliament at the time to the extremes this gentleman was rushing to, in order to lay together allotment to allotment at Mount Macedon. To gratify his own idea, he brought himself under the purview of the Royal Commission which was to have been appointed to investigate suspicious dealings with the Lands Department. Nor were his efforts fruitless. At one time cinchona and Mount Macedon appeared secured. A grateful Lands Minister, with a lively recollection of favours to come, granted the allotments. But, alas, Dr. Müller, we now learn, refused the cinchonæ! Everything else was at the service of the lucky selector. The white mulberry, the cork oak, the tallow tree, and the soft-soap plant, were at his disposal. Moreover, a vigilant Victorian who has left our Civil Service for another sphere, had, it appears, supplied Dr. Müller with thousands of seeds from the Ropate Tea Gardens of Assam. They have flourished wonderfully in the Botanical Gardens of Melbourne. They have been distributed about the colony, and have grown everywhere. Any number of these tea-plants were at the journalist's service — Mount Macedon might have rivalled the hills of Assam, or the lofty plateau of the Yang-tse-kiang — but he declined them all. Miss Kilmansegg, deprived of her dexter support, insisted upon a leg of gold. Gold, gold, and nothing but gold! The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill, would satisfy the English people in their Reform frenzy. Cinchona trees, and nothing but cinchonæ, would content the delirious journalist. He must, he could, and he would — but he did not. For once Dr. Müller hardened his heart, and the cinchonæ do not adorn the graceful slopes of the noble mount. All that is left to the being thus deprived of his bark — his medicinal bark of such high value — is to growl, and growl he accordingly does at Dr. Müller's management of the Botanic Gardens. Other critics have blamed that gentleman for being prodigal in the distribution of plants. It has seemed to us that, while the country reserves blossomed with shrubs from his nurseries, the Melbourne gardens have displayed a vacuum abhorred by man and nature. But our Elizabeth street contemporary is blinded by the cinchona trees. The complaint is artfully made about the non-distribution of the tea shrubs, but the tea shrubs have been distributed. It is the cinchonæ plants which remain. They crowd the gardens, according to Ananias. They ought to have been distributed. Mount Macedon is waiting for them! We feel a compassion for Dr. Müller. A sense of duty has induced us to smite him upon one cheek for his prolific distribution of plants. Our contemporary smites him on the other, because in one instance — the only instance on record — he refused an application. One comfort is left him while pacing the romantic slopes of the mount. He may join in the sentiment a learned Bishop expressed on another scene, and murmur that "every prospect pleases, and only man is vile." Very vile man must be at Mount Macedon — and Elizabeth street. A wholesale slaughter of Dr. Müller because of a trumpery cinchona tree or two!'

The Daily telegraph was vigorously opposed to Syme and his Age, a position commented upon by provincial newspapers, accusing him of underhand methods of acquiring land at Mount Macedon: see Ballarat courier, 18 December 1869, p. 2, which described the Daily telegraph's approach as 'calling an obnoxious rival an "Ananias" and a "newspaper skunk," telling him his sins have found him out, and leaving him to the " public executioner"'.

McCulloch initialled the file, but there is no indication of any further action. No response to the article has been found in the Daily telegraph.