Ferdinand von Mueller

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MS is a scribal copy, without signature. The file is annotated 'Cabinet 18/2' and was initialed by Ramsay on 3 March 1875.

Melbourne,

1/8/74

The Honorable

Rob. Ramsay MLA

Sir

I have the honor to draw respectfully your attention to the utterly inadequate provision made on the estimates for the necessary expenses of my responsible position in the important department under my care, feeling persuaded that as the professional administrator I ought to bring the wants of my institution early under your ministerial consideration. I do this with all the more frankness as I feel assured that it cannot be your desire to see the researches paralyzed, for which I originally organized my department and which have been of such extensive benefit to the whole colony, merely for want of the most ordinary means granted to every other branch of the public service.

With a solicitation therefore that you will be pleased to provide on the additional estimates such sums as will enable me to resume my departmental labors to the fullest benefit of the country and for a new honorable share in the labors of Australian science, I beg now to explain the financial requirements for my work.

I. Ordinary working expenses.

There being only £300.- provided on the already printed estimates, out of which sum only the modest salary of the Museum Assistant at £150.-, and the Museum material, stores, stationery, and instruments at £150.-, can be defrayed, I now beg to suggest for your favorable consideration the following additional items:

During the last year I was forced to pay nearly £200,- of my salary to obtain the needful new books and scientific periodicals in order to maintain posted up on professional progressive researches elsewhere, and to enable me to carry on my own independent enquiries to meet not only my literary obligations but also the incessant calls by our colonists for information.

A large sum had to be disbursed out of my own salary during the last financial year while engaged in three professional and departmental journeys irrespective of numerous other unavoidable expenses paid out of my private resources to maintain honorably the efficiency of at least a portion of my departmental work and my progressive researches

II Expenses not reocurring

On the estimates already printed the sum of £100.- is specially provided for publishing works on plants, but this represents merely the amount, which as a guaranteed subsidy will be due before the end of the new financial year, to Mr. Bentham for the new volume (in English) on Australian plants,

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i.e. the next volume of Bentham (1863-78).

so that these £100.- will need to be transmitted in due time to the Agent General, when in return a number of copies of the volume will be received by the Government. From the full information now afforded you will be pleased to observe that irrespective of my moderate income as a first class officer in professional service, the total of the proposed ordinary working expenses, is reduced to about £1000, therefore to far less than those of any other similar department in the service of this colony, while not even buildings for the advantageous performance of my works are provided, only the Museum room, in reality but a storeroom of the dried plants, and not furnished even with a fireplace, being available. I have therefore to add a solicitation that in justice provision may also be made for a new office building, in which I can properly work with microscopes and other instruments, and where the necessary library space is provided, either by rent or otherwise, the office rent having also during the last 13 months fallen on my private resources now reduced (after the sacrifice of all my private property in the service) to a salary smaller than that of any other professional head of a department. It is also right for me to point out to you, as the hon. minister of the department, that since 15 years no means have been available to extend the Museum building, and that the precious collections, accumulated, under my exertions, and largely inaccessible for want of space and accommodation.

It remains also my duty to draw your favorable consideration to the circumstance that for the last 4 years no remittance could be made to Dr. W. Sonder of Hamburg, from whom I expected to secure successively his valuable collections as additional aid for my researches by yearly instalments of payment, only our remittance of £120.- for one tenth of the collection having as yet been made through the Agent General. In order that faith may be kept with this illustrious man in the arrangement to locate here finally his collections, secured at great cost by him and with life-long toil, I beg leave to recommend that as a not recurring expense the sum of £880 may also be provided, by which the purchase would at once be completed. Dr. Sonder, at the recent scientific congress of Florence, had to decline the offer of £1000.- for his herbarium, which was to be secured for a leading scientific institution of Europe, simply because part of the collection having been forwarded already by sale to the Victorian Government and being incorporated already in our state collections here.