Document information

Physical location:

RB MSS M56, Library, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. 94.08.25

Plant names

Preferred Citation:

St Eloy D'Alton to Ferdinand von Mueller, 1894-08-25. 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/1890-6/1894/94-08-25-final.odt>, accessed July 21, 2026

1
MS black-edged; M's nephew George Ferdinand Doughty died on 19 November 1893. MS found with a specimen of Spyridium bifidum (MEL 233428). MS is accompanied by one of M's herbarium labels in an unknown hand: 'Grampians Victoria. St. Eloy D'Alton 1894'. A later note reads: 'Cooack Parish, at S. edge of Little Desert, northerly from Mitre Lake'.
Nhill
2
Vic.
August 25th/94
My Dear Baron
Accept my grateful thanks for the seeds you so kindly sent me. I shall distribute them amongst those who take an interest in economic plants. I am sending under separate cover two specimens, one of an acacia rather rare in this part and the other a
Cryptandra

Search for Cryptandra in

I presume, which is only to be met with in one locality in this district It grows 4 and 5 feet high, and the leaves are not the same shape as the others I have collected here and at the Grampians I regret to have to inform you that one of my dear sisters died a few weeks ago at their place Glenbower in the Grampians.
3
Susan D’Alton.
Her loss leaves a very great void in my heart as she was my favorite sister being more a mother than a sister to me when I was a boy. Her illness was very brief being heart disease contracted in recent years of which none of the family was aware She does not seem to have known her self what was the matter. However it seems that the disease is in the family, as she makes the third who went off suddenly from the same cause.
With kind regards
Yours faithfully
St Eloy D'Alton
P.S. Would like to hear something about the Horn expedition to the McDonald Ranges.
4
A scientific expedition to the Macdonnell Ranges in Central Australia, sponsored by the mining magnate and pastoralist W. A. Horn, was in the field from May until August 1894 (see Horn (1896)); for background, see Lucas (2018), pp. 817-8.