Ferdinand von Mueller

1

Though no addressee is identified in the letter, it is obviously a response to A. Milne-Edwards to M, 9 February 1894, in which Milne-Edwards indicated that he would support M's election as a Corresponding Member of the Académie des Sciences, Paris, when a vacancy appeared.

12/3/94

Your letter, received by last weekly mail has been most cheering to me and I thank you for all your generous sentiments, dear Professor; indeed I was quite electrified when I received it, as the honor to become connected with the Institut I should value as the crowning reward for my life's work. But if the vacancy, which has arisen, is through the lamented death of Alphonse de Candolle, then his illustrious son Casimir has the highest claims for a corr. membership

2

M had evidently misunderstood the situation in the Académie. Alphonse de Candolle had indeed once been a Corresponding Member but in 1874 he had been advanced to the rank of associé étranger, one of the only eight allowed for in the statutes of the Académie. Hence his death did not create a vacancy for a Corresponding Member of the Botany Section. M had to wait for a further year before he was elected, following the death of the Berlin botany professor Nathanael Pringsheim.

It was gratifying to me also, that now I learn of the safe arrival of Notoryctes typhlops. If you knew, what enormous exertions I made to obtain a specimen, then you will understand my anxiety about its safety. I will send you by the "Australien" some more eggs of Austral Birds and many other things, and hope to have by that time also the cross-section of a stem of Nuytsia floribunda and roots for Prof van Tieghem. You shall have something by each voyage of the "Australien".

one letter of your to me must have been lost.