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92.11.00b

Preferred Citation:

Ferdinand von Mueller to W. Herbert Jones, 1892-11 [92.11.00b]. R.W. Home, Thomas A. Darragh, A.M. Lucas, Sara Maroske, D.M. Sinkora, J.H. Voigt and Monika Wells (eds), Correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, <https://vmcp.rbg.vic.gov.au/id//letters/1890-6/1892/92-11-00b-final.odt>, accessed June 13, 2026

1
Letter not found. For the text given here, see 'The world's wonderland', Bendigo advertiser , 21 September 1895, p. 4 (B95.09.05). The text is preceded by a report of a forthcoming lecture in Bendigo by 'the Australian traveller Mr. Herbert Jones F.R.G.S.' on the subject 'New Zealand, the World's Wonderland'. The report continues: 'The following testimony regarding this gentleman, by Baron Sir F. Von Mueller, will show that a great treat is in store for those who are able to hear his lecture in Bendigo'. This source is the fullest of the numerous versions of the text that has been found.
M presided at a lecture on 'New Zealand and the wonderland of Oceana' by Herbert Jones at the Melbourne Arthenaeum on 15 November 1892 ( Table talk (Melbourne), 16 November 1892, p. 4). Later, Jones, in an interview in Lyttelton times (New Zealand), 1 September 1893, p. 3, reported that M had 'written to him in very complimentary terms'. On the assumption that the present text is adapted from the letter to which Herbert Jones refers, and that M would have written this letter soon after he heard the lecture, the item is dated to mid-to-late November 1892. Although not given as a quotation, a news item in Otago daily times (New Zealand), 6 Februray 1893, p. 2, reports that 'Baron Sir F. von Mueller, who presided, declared the lecture to be one of the most brilliant he had ever heard'.
Jones used parts of the present text on his lecture tour in the UK, for example in an advertisement for his lecture at the Tyneside Geographical Society on 1 April 1896 ( Shields daily gazette, 30 March 1896, p. 1).
Jones's name appears in various ways in different sources, with Herbert Jones sometimes treated as a compound surname, sometimes but not always hyphenated.
Among all the splended lectures to which I have listened during a long series of years, those of Mr. Herbert-Jones were particularly brilliant. He is by natural gift quite an orator. He has mastered the subject on which he speaks by very lengthened personal travels and observation. His word pictures are most impressive as well as instructive, and by a strain of humor also very entertaining.