Ferdinand von Mueller

Royal Gardens Kew

December 19th 1857.

Sir,

It would be difficult to speak too highly of the extent & value of Dr Mueller's labors, as a Colonial Botanist & Director of the Victoria Botanic Garden; whilst as Botanist to Mr Gregory's North Australian Exploring Expedition, he has displayed an amount of well-directed zeal & energy, in the performance of his Scientific duties, under circumstances of great hardship & difficulty, such as has never been surpassed. Much of his success is no doubt due to the enlightened patronage, he has, in his first capacity, received from the Colonial Government, & on the journey, to the admirable arrangements of Mr Gregory, who throughout afforded him the most important aid & kindest encouragement; but necessary as such aids are to complete success, they can be of little utility except when extended to persons fully qualified to take advantage of them. This is evidently the case with Dr Mueller, who unites an Excellent general knowledge of Australian Botany, to indomitable energy, & unceasing activity, ardor in the pursuit of his favorite science, great powers of observation & facility in describing accurately what he sees.

The results of this important & difficult journey were no less valuable in a Geographical & Botanical point of view than the previous ones; & the Report is equally full of most interesting information for the Botanist & Colonist. It was during this Expedition that Dr Mueller discovered several British plants in the almost inaccessible ravines of hitherto unvisited mountains, which plants have been no where else found in the Southern hemisphere. The appended catalogue of the Victoria Flora raises its number to 2500 species, of which 1700 are Flowering plants.

The above refer to Dr Muellers principal journeys in Victoria, but they afford little idea of the extent of his labors as a Botanist, especially of those that occupied the intervals between his successive expeditions. These intervals were employed in making a complete named Herbarium for the use of the Colony; in distributing his collections of plants & seeds, & in describing his discoveries, of which upwards of 200 have been published in the Kew Journal of Botany & in the Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Victoria.

II. As Botanist to Mr Gregory's North Australian Exploring Expedition, Dr Mueller accompanied that officer across the whole continent of Australia. The operations of this celebrated Expedition are too well known to render it desirable to follow them here, & we shall therefore confine our Report to its Botanical results. These consist of a Herbarium of more than 1500 species, of which probably 300 to 400 are quite new to science; they have arrived at Kew in excellent preservation; & we are at a loss to conceive how collections, of such magnitude, could have been formed & transported throughout an Expedition attended with so much difficulty & so many privations, & especially one provided with such scanty means of transport. To a very great extent the dried specimens are accompanied by descriptions, made from the living plants, during night-watches & hours that should have been devoted to repose. These occupy several reams of foolscap paper & will prove of the greatest value in preparing at a future period a proper account of the Botany of this most Extraordinary journey. Besides these, there are general descriptions of the vegetation of the various districts & formations traversed & remarks on the Natural families of plants that characterize the vegetation; these which have all been published in the Kew Journal of Botany display a great amount of Botanical knowledge & a complete mastery of a very difficult subject.

The most important Botanical results of the Expedition have further been ably [embo]died by Dr Mueller himself in a Report presented to Mr Gregory; this has been transmitted to us by the Secretary for the Colonies, & has been read before the Linnean Society of London, in which Dr Mueller has always expressed the warmest interest. Though most of its contents have appeared in another & disconnected form, in the Kew Journal of Botany, it is much to be desired that this Report also should be printed, and circulated as widely as possible amongst Scientific men.

III. Since Dr Mueller's return to Melbourne he has been zealously occupied as Director of the Botanic Garden, in remodelling it, & in extending its sphere of utility. This Garden has fortunately experienced the enlightened patronage of the Governor & Legislature of Victoria, & under Dr Mueller's direction it promises soon to become eminently useful to the Colony & to science, whether as a means of introducing plants of Economic, Medical & Horticultural interest, or of spreading a love & knowledge of these amongst the Colonists, or of transmitting the Vegetable products of Australia to other parts of the Globe. Numerous collections of seeds have repeatedly been sent by Dr Mueller to Kew; & we have within the last few days forwarded to him (through Edward Bell Esq Commissioner for Victoria) a very large general collection of living plants, besides a choice selection in Ward's cases, & seeds of many hundred hardy & half-hardy shrubs & trees of the North temperate zone. As however a Botanic Garden without a Library & Herbarium can make no progress, we have at Dr Mueller's request, purchased a selection of the most important standard works on Botany for his use, & are preparing a Herbarium of named plants to be deposited with them in the Garden[s]. We further trust soon to hear, that an Instructive Museum of Economic Botany has been added to the establishment at Victoria, when the whole will present a complete Institution, suited to the development of Economic & Scientific Botany, to the Instructive recreation of the Colonists, & to the advance of their material prosperity.

To

The Right Honorable the First Secretary of State for the Colonies &c &c.

1

The report was received at the time a report on the North Australian Exploring Expedition was being prepared in the Colonial Office for printing as a Parliamentary Paper, but the Permanent Under Secretary of State, Henry Merivale, minuted: 'I do not think this should be printed. It seems to me scarcely a proper use to make of a Parliamentary Report on the subject of an exploring expedition, to add a panegyric on one of the members of it, reviewing his whole scientific labors, & in great measure unconnected with the expedition'. Other readers concurred, and the report was 'laid aside'.