Ferdinand von Mueller

1

MS envelope front: 'To the Hon. Secretary of the S.A. branch of the Austral Geograph Society Adelaide'.

23/5/86

Dear Sir,

Our alert Hon Secr.

2

Alexander Macdonald.

here handed to me a letter of yours,

3

Letter not found.

in which the approval of your new Code for our different geographic branches is sought. Kindly send me also a copy of the proposed rules, and while the other circulates among my Colleagues of the Council, I will carefully make any annotations, which may seem to me desirable.

As regards the proposition of uniting with your branch the historic Society there, I must confess, that I should strongly disadvise such complications, — nor do I think that it would be just to your Royal Society there, who would more properly in its wide scope embrace other branches of science. History of geography is in reality only geography itself, just as history of medicine is only a part of medical Science.

If we encumber our Society with incongruous collateral obligations, we shall make our work still more onerous, get our attention diverted from the legitimate objects before us, and involve ourselves in additional responsibilities, while indeed the great science of geography will claim in a new part of the world, like ours, all the attention which any one of us can possibly bestow on it.

4

See A. Margery to M, 29 May 1886 (in this edition as 86-05-29a), in which Margery responds that M has misunderstood his committee's intentions.