Ferdinand von Mueller

1

MS is a file copy, not in M's hand or carrying his signature.

Copy

Melbourne

11 July 1888.

To his Excellency Dr Macgregor &c &c

Governor of British New Guinea.

I have the honor to inform your excellency that at a meeting of the council of the R.G.S.A. you have been elected an Honorary Member of our Victorian Branch of the Society, by which act we desire to express our homage to you in the exalted position, which you occupy as her Majesty's Representative of a great and rich colonial territory and by which distinction we wish to recognize the interest, evinced by your Excellency also in the progress of geographic discoveries. I am further desired by my Colleagues to invite you to a meeting of the members of the Victorian Branch, to be held near the end of this month, when two communications will be read in reference to islands near New Guinea.

2

MacGregor was in Melbourne from 3 to 27 July (Argus, 7 July 1888, p. 11; Sydney morning herald, 28 July 1868, p. 12), and would not have been able to attend the meeting held on 31 July at which a paper 'Some coral and volcanic islands in the Western Pacific' was read by F. A. Campbell, and 'Dr Usher, Mr. G. S. Griffiths, and Mr. Wilkinson, of South Australia, spoke on the same subject' ('Royal Geographical Society of Australasia', Argus, 1 August 1888, p. 8).