12/1/87.
It was with perfect delight, dear Mr Mitten, that I learnt by last mail, you would
be willing to resume your important researches on Australian Mosses from Material,
which I might be able to send. Indeed I have to thank you for a list of some names
already.
Mr Sayer will still be for some weeks at elevations of several thousand feet in North-Queensland,
and this new region is sure to furnish also additions to Bryology. It needs not my
assurance, that I should be very glad, to fulfil your wish, of getting illustrations
of
issued here; but none of the scientific societies here have means for it; and my
Department is also unable to bear the expenditure; indeed I am always sinking my own
private means into the office-work, to expedite research and extend it.
Herewith seeds of Euc. Gunnii and a few other easily grown plants, enduring slight
frost.
I have what seems a Dawsonia from New Guinea, it may be superba; but the specimens
are without fruit.
Accept my best thanks for your felicitation at the anniversary of our Christian era;
and let me hope, that also to you the new year will be replete with happiness!
Regardfully your
Ferd. von Mueller
A few weeks ago, I was invited as President of the geographic Society here to a Banquet
on the occasion of the first Australian Conference of Pharmacists,
delegates having come from all these Colonies. In my response to a toast I alluded
most particularly to yourself as a real ornament of the pharm. profession, having
also occasion to refer to Oersted and Forchhammer as originally pharmacists, whom
I met personally at the meeting of 1846, of the German Association of Physicians and
Naturalists, which gathering I attended (40 years ago!) as an
active
member.
Pray, publish any new species at once in some journal or periodical in
Britain
. I should have some difficulty of seeing msc here through the press.
