Ferdinand von Mueller

Letter not found. The text given here is from Smyth (1878), vol. 1, p. 211.

It is not known when the letter was written. Although the passages quoting M must have been written after late September 1871 when it was 'understood' in Australia that M had been created a baron of the Kingdom of Württemberg (see South Australian advertiser, 13 September 1871, p. 2) and before Smyth's letter covering the submission of the text to the Victorian Government dated 13 November 1876 (p. iii), Smyth would have used 'Baron' in his text even if the letter was written before 1871. Smyth comments in his preface that he began to gather information for his book 'about 16 years ago' (that is, around 1860), while from his earliest times in Victoria M was interested in the sugary nature of the secretions, discussing it extensively in M to the Editor, Inglewood advertiser , 2 April 1861 (in this edition as 61-03-26). Smyth could have received M's letter at any time in the 1860s or up until 1876 when the book was completed; it is dated here to 1876 as the latest date when it could have been sent. However,  if it was prepared at the same time as the list comprising B78.13.01, pp. 212-4, this is likely to have been in the early 1870s since Smyth wrote when introducing it ‘At my request, and, I know, under unusual difficulties, the Government Botanist has hurriedly prepared the following list’, an apparent reference to the disputes in the early 1870s leading to M’s removal as Director of the Botanic Gardens.