Ferdinand von Mueller

Letter not found. The text given here is from 'The Contributor. The Osmoscope', Leader (Melbourne), 4 January 1890, p. 36. The extract is introduced by ' Dr. Ivan Noutschi, the eminent Boston oculist, intended to have read the following paper on next Wednesday evening before the Australasian Association for th e Advancement of Science. Owing to a domestic bereavement he is compelled to leave the Colony today to rejoin his family in Sydney .'

The text of his intended presentation follows. The article is a spoof, using M's name to add verisimilitude. No mention can be found of 'Ivan Noutschi' as an oculist in Boston; there were no evening sessions for presentation of papers during the AAAS meeting and the only evening event on Wednesday 8 January was a Conversazione in the Melbourne Town Hall (Report of the second meeting of the Australasian Association for the advancement of Science held in Melbourne in January, 1890, p. xvi; the Conversazione is described in 'News of the Day', Age (Melbourne), 9 January 1890, p. 5, and was a social entertainment. The cited works by others do not exist, and their supposed authors are fictitious. The supposed text of the lecture is printed in the Age, with the text used in the introduction in the Leader given as a footnote ('The Osmoscope', Age, 4 January 1890, p. 13); these titles are companion newspapers. The item was taken seriously by at least one reader, Dr A. T. Gunning ('A new method of diagnosis', Leader, 8 February 1890, p. 37), for details of whom see AMPI.