Ferdinand von Mueller

1

Annotated ‘And Aug 10/72’.

Melbourne

bot Garden

20/5/72

I think I have at last satisfactor[e]ly arranged about getting an other Todea, dear Dr Hooker. The season has been unusually wet; but if I can get it away next month it will come still before winter to you, though it will have to encounter the frosts of Cape Horn. Should I fail to get such a monster, as you desire,

2

No specific request for additional Todea has been found in Hooker's surviving letters, but see J. Hooker to M, 28 March 1870 (in this edition as 70-03-28b) and J. Hooker to M, 1 December 1871 (in this edition as 71-12-01a).

then I will return the £15 - -, which are now fully at my disposal, as you generously and disinterestedly gave me alone for the sending of the other large specimen credit, which is really not just to yourself.

3

John Booth who received the Todea specimen concerned also reimbursed £15 to Hooker: J. Booth to J. Hooker 26 June 1871 (in this edition as M71-06-26).

I admire much the record of this plant in your Magazine,

4

Botanical m agazine, vol. 98, 1872, t. 5954.

but there is a slight alteration needed in one part of the record. These large Todeas do not emanate always laterally from the banks of torrents or rivulets, but more frequently stand quite upright in the shallow water-courses, the rivulets washing around them and the Todeas standing in the water like so many little islands. I assure you the game of getting at one of these giants in the deep ravines and recesses in this colony at least is highly exciting. Shooting excursions or deer staking

5

stalking?

is nothing compared to it. Chamois hunting is a fairer comparison.

By way of trial I am going to send you a tall stem of Cycas angulata (C. gracilis Miq.) If it perishes on the way, it will still be acceptable for the Museum.

Poor Mrs Calvert, formerly Miss Atkinson, whose name so often occurs in the flor Australiana, died this month.

6

Louisa Calvert died on 28 April 1872 (Sydney morning herald, 30 April 1872, p. 1). The newspaper published an obituary on 2 May 1872, p. 7.

In 1866 she had asked her lawyer to draft a will. Her instructions included:

My collection of natural history sketches to go to Dr Ferdinand Mueller government Botanist at Melbourne.

He has been a kind friend to me and would value them they might be useful in illustrating the natural history of the colony.

(L. Atkinson to N. Stenhouse, undated note, annotated as received on 11 October 1866; A100, p. 324, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.) That will if executed would have become void on her marriage in 1869, but she had given sketches to M before she died and M had sent them and her accompanying notes to Germany as possibly useful for display or publication; see M to F. von Krauss, 26 January 1871, and W. Sonder to F. von Krauss, 9 June 1871 (in this edition as M71-06-09).

She leaves an infant child. Her husband is Jam. Calvert Esq J.P. one of the Companions of Leichhardt in his first great Expedition, a truly excellent man.

The Gardener, to whom you gave an introduction, has called; but in this country, any man, eve[r] so inferior, cannot be moved to make place for a better one. Hence I cannot give employment for your protegee however much I wish. I try to get him a place elsewhere.

7

‘I try ... elsewhere’ marginal note with intended position indicated by *.

My miseries in the Department arose largely from the continued grossest secret misrepresentations of a few of the lowest underlings of gardeners, one particularly vulgar and low, and whom I cannot remove, though he holds only the place of a common working gardener.

8

William Smith? See D. Coller to M, 10 March 1866 and D. Coller to M, 11 May 1870.

Yet withall I am held responsible for the welworking of the department, but not supported in my authority!

The appendix to the Acclim. Soc. Report on utilitarian plant

9

B72.13.02.

will only be printed in full by next mail, so my lecture on the objects of bot Gardens

10

B72.07.02.

My reply to the stupid cruel and largely truthless report of the three [persons], who sat anno dei 1871 to judge on her Majestys bot Garden of Victoria, has not yet been printed;

11

For the reply see M to C Duffy, 6 February 1872. M later sent a manuscript copy to Kew (RGB, Kew Misc. Reports, Melbourne, Mueller). No contemporary published version of the full response has been found, but it is summarized in newspaper reports of a meeting between the Minister of Lands, M and William Ferguson, e.g. Daily t elegraph (Melbourne), 12 July 1872, p. 3. See also Maroske & Cohn (1996).

but when issued you surely shall have a copy. So you may see, what it means when proverbially it has become said "what may happen to a man in Victoria"