Ferdinand von Mueller

7/1/80.

I did not anticipate, dear Prof Tate, that Mr Wycliffe's notes on traces of human steps on the rocks, mentioned by him, are reliable.

1

For a published version of the notes describing Wycliffe's observations made in 1866 near Blanche Water Creek, SA, see 'Fossil "Foot-prints in the Sands of Time"', Queenslander (Brisbane), 17 January 1880, p. 84 .

In a letter to the editor of the Queenslander, dated 16 February [1880], Wycliffe wrote:

With regard to my paper on the above subject which appeared in your issue of the 17 th January last, I beg to inform you that I sent a copy to Baron F. von Mueller, Victoria, who kindly transmitted it to Prof. Ralph Tate, of the Adelaide University, who is making a geological survey of the country near Blanche Water, and will give a strictly scientific report on the subject' ( Queenslander , 6 March 1880, p. 308).

No letter from Wycliffe to M has been found.

The imagination of untrained observers is too vivid, and in this conjecture I am reminded of Hamlets and his courtiers colloquy concerning the shapes of the clouds!

2

Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2.

Veronica peregrina spreads more and more from year to year, but it is not a native. I have encouraged two South Australian correspondents to furnish lists of the plants, which I named for them, as their localities were not well searched before. These notes may prove acceptable for the volumes of the phil. Soc. of Adelaide. This falls in with your own views, and I will be most happy to revise any Census, which you may write regarding the plants of South Australia and of which you should be yourself the author. The incompletion of the S. Austr. plants in the "flora Australiensis" arose from two causes.

1, Mr Bentham would not record any species, from any spot, unless he saw a specimen; thus many of my msc. notes at Kew regarding the geographic distribution of the species were never used. This however I would not like to state publicly.

2, the earlier volumes were published at a time, when far less of the vegetation of your extensive territory was known; thus many additions to the species and still more so to the localities have been made since 1863.

In the publication of such a Census I would suggest, that the sequence of the orders be that adopted by me for the Tasmanian plants,

3

B80.13.10.

in which arrangement I distributed the monochlamydeae of D.C. or apetalae of Juss.

4

De Candolle; Jussieu.

among the other orders. Thus all the Amyliferae (Curvembryonatae), scattered by Bentham through five volumes, come together, & several other important changes have been made by me in the classification.

Would it not be well to omit in first instance the Arnhems Land plants, or better still to publish them separately though certainly many of the tropical & extratropical species meet in Central Australia.

I suppose you have seen my long list of Giles 3th & 4th Expeditions p[laced] in Trimen's journal?

5

Ernest Giles; B77.09.01, B77.10.01, B77.11.03.