Ferdinand von Mueller

Bot. garden 10/7/70.

By this mail, dear Dr Hooker, you will receive a set of those lithograms, which I had prepared since the 2-volume was issued,

1

Presumably lithograms printed but not otherwise published after the 2 volumes of Plants indigenous to the colony of Victoria (B62.03.03, B65.02.06) appeared. See Ewart (1910?) which includes plates drawn for, but not published by, M. Ewart's volume carries no publication date but it was noticed in Victorian naturalist, vol. 27, 1910-11, pp. 158-9 (part issued in December 1910).

but which Mr Bentham has not seen, though I am certain that I sent them successively to Kew.

I have only lately had an opportunity (for want of leisure before) to read Mr Fitch's admirable instructions on drawings of plants, as published in the Gardeners Chronicle.

2

Fitch (1869).

I intend to make these excellent remarks the basis of a discourse, which I have undertaken to deliver at our new school of design.

3

The lecture appears never to have been published. M delivered his lecture, 'On the principles which rule the art of drawing plants from nature', to the Artisans' School of Design on 5 August 1870 (Argus, 6 August 1870, p. 5, which summarizes its content).

Would it not be well, if the whole was reprinted, as it is very incommodious to find the articles together, scattered as they are through the chronicle.

4

No such publication was issued.

The same remark applies to Mr Berkeleys essays on plant diseases,

5

Berkeley published 173 numbered short notes, signed 'M. J. B.' under the general title of 'Vegetable Pathology' in the Gardeners' Chronicle between 1854 and 1857. A full list was included in the concluding note (Berkeley (1857)).

which observations I hoped the Rev Gentleman would have collected again in the form of a book. We want badly some pathology of plants, & the mycologic portion could be done by no one better justice to than Mr Berkeley. I have again sent some fungi for his examination, altho' I confess in candor, that I feel discouraged in these sendings, the long promised examination of the Australian species never having taken place, unless now at last under progress. I should have thought, that an observer, so experienced as Berkeley, would at least be able to work the majority of easily recognised species up without any great sacrifice of time.

6

Berkeley (1873) describes or lists fungi noted in M to M. Berkeley, 25 July 1860 (in this edition as 60-07-25d) and many other species.

A letter from J. Hooker to Berkeley dated 'Kew, Wednesday' is filed on the same page of the guard book (Natural History Museum, Botany Library, Berkeley correspondence vol. 7 Hoo – Jer) as an undated note by M: 'I always send all my specimens of the fungi to Mr. Berkeley. The rev. Gentleman could therefore oblige by sending of each kind a specimen back whenever the material admits of it.' The latter is annotated by Hooker: 'From Ferdinand Mueller the unconscionable to J D Hooker the sufferer'.

The associated letter offers Berkeley 'a few notes on the Southern Fungi just as I made them' and goes on to say that Hooker will send extracts of Berkeley's instructions for collecting fungi to 'any of my correspondents in New Zealand & to Gunn in VDL hoping to get up a Mycologia of these countries'.

It was not only M who complained about Berkeley's tardiness: Charles Darwin commented to J. Hooker, 11 January 1844, that 'My cryptogamic collection [from the Beagle voyage] was sent to Berkeley; it was not large; I do not believe he has yet published an account, but he wrote to me some year ago that he had described & mislaid all his descriptions'. See Burkhardt et al. (1985- ), vol. 3, p. 2.

I have not as yet been able to get more Todeas out of the Ranges, the season having been too wet.