Ferdinand von Mueller

30/12/86.

You must have wondered, dear Mr Deane, why I did not acknowledge the receipt of your sending of dried plants, but though it was made by you there 2 weeks ago, it reached me only yesterday evening here.

I have at once examined the contents, and beg to say, that the supposed new Conifer

1

See M to H. Deane, 10 December 1886.

is a

Callitris

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, on which six-valved galls had developed, the larva of the insect producing this excrescence indirectly being in one of the galls still. Teratologically these specimens are valuable as showing that the galls are growing on the same morphologic plan, as the

Callitris

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-fruit.

The Darwinia is D. virgata, which Cunningham placed in a separate genus as Homoranthus. The locality is new, and shall be recorded in my works under the finders name.

As I hope to be favored by so excellent an observer of plants as yourself with further sendings occasionally, allow me to remark, that the parcel-post is the best vehicle for that purpose, as then the letter-carrier delivers the sending at my dwelling, and no delay occurs. Moreover a parcel, ever so small, coming by rail from an other colony has here to pass the Custom house, and that through an accredited agent, so that the clearing and final transit incurres quite as much expense as a large case of merchandise. As the specimens thus did not reach me at once, the

Melaleuca

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(fresh in the metal-case) had fallen to pieces in decay. Lately I received about 200 species of Kimberley-plants from the Ord-River

2

WA.

township by post, closely packed, and the whole postage was 3/ only. At a similar cheap rate I received for years parcels after parcels from the Central Austr. mission-station,

3

The Lutheran mission at Hermannsburg, NT.

though they had to be carried for hundreds of miles by horse-mail. The limit for parcels by post is 3lb in Victoria, probably it is the same in N.S.W. As I do live some distance from Melbourne, I am placed at greater disadvantage still for clearing consignments, whether by rail or steamer. Excuse the frankness, in which I explain this.

The Eucalyptus, sent by you, seems to me referable to E. viminalis, the leaves of the suckers perhaps being abnormally broad.

With my best felicitation to you at the anniversary of our Christian era, your