Melbourne botan Garden
24/3/71
Allow me, dear Mr Barlee, to ask from you a favor in the interest of industrial researches
and indeed also in the interests of your colonial resources. I am very anxious to
have fuller information, then hitherto exstant, on the woods of West Australia, which
are almost all peculiar to your colonial territory. The only wood about which, as
far as W. Australia is concerned, is anything fairly known, is the jarrah; but the
Tooart, the Karri, the Blue Gum of W. A (peculiar) the Red Gum of W. A (peculiar)
and indeed all your Eucalypts, your
e and
e must have important uses, well known to your local traders and artisans, but unknown
here. As I intend to publish an essay
soon
on all the woods of Australia in connection with our industrial Museum here,
I would ask, whether your Government could not have a short circular (perhaps a printed one) sent to all Police Magistrates,
Surveyors, Shipbuilders, Wheel wrights, carpenters, Joiners, Turners, &c &c asking
for full information on the woods employed by them, and begging of them to accompany
their notes with flowering and fruiting branches of the trees, to which they refer.
It would be most advantageous that the practical results and information gained by
your artisans since 30 years should be placed somewhere on record, because that would
tend to make your resources better known, and give a new impetus to free immigration.
Also about your gums, resins &c we are almost completely in the dark, because in most
cases, when specimens were received, they were not accompanied by the branchlets of
the plants yielding them, or if so, it frequently happened that the botanic specimens
were quite insufficient to fix the name of the species, producing the article of commerce
or of industry.
As the publication, in which these remarks from West Australia are to be embodied,
is likely to appear soon, I would feel indebted, if I could get the information from
the various parts of your colony soon; it can be successively supplemented.
Let me remain, dear Mr Barlee, your regardful
Ferd. von Mueller.
A direct call call by circular would be probably far more effective than a general
public request.
