94 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



ADDRESS. 



Instead of the usual papers Mr. C. A. Topp, M.A., LL.B., 

 F.L.S., delivered an address with reference to the career of the 

 late Baron von Mueller, which was as follows : — 



" As to-day is the first anniversary of the death of an old friend 

 and familiar figure at this annual wild flower show of the Club, 

 it has been thought appropriate that a few words should be said 

 in memory of our former beloved and respected patron, Baron 

 von Mueller, who took so kindly an interest in these exhibitions, 

 who, on these occasions, placed at the disposal of the youngest 

 and least learned among us the best stores of his botanical know- 

 ledge, and who afforded the members of our Club, whenever any 

 question of difficult identification arose, the aid of his unequalled 

 experience and memory. 



" I have been asked to speak some few words expressive of our 

 appreciation of our old friend and fellow-member, from my con- 

 nection for the last three or four years of his life with the depart- 

 ment of which he was so great an ornament. It will not be 

 expected that I should be able to add anything new to the notices 

 which have appeared during the past twelve months of Baron 

 von Mueller's life and work, or that I should now give a detailed 

 account of either. I can only bear witness to the unwearied zeal 

 with which the great botanist carried out the routine and attended 

 to the business of his office, to his punctuality and thoroughness 

 in correspondence, his readiness to supply information and advice 

 to correspondents in other countries in regard to the economic 

 uses of our indigenous plants, and the pride he took in the 

 successful cultivation in other parts of the world of our useful 

 timber-trees and valuable forage plants. 



" In regard to this latter characteristic, Professor M'Owan, the 

 writer of a notice in the Cape Argus, mentions how ' Von Mueller 

 prided himself, not unworthily, upon having been the means of 

 dotting the treeless plateaux of the Cape with the varied species 

 of eucalyptus, and its sandy flats with the golden wattle ; ' he 

 says that our old friend's ' most characteristic letters were those 

 expressing his enthusiastic delight at the success attending the 

 acclimatization of Atriplex nummularia from his little packet of 

 half a dozen seeds.' I may myself add that in several of the late 

 Government Botanist's letters to me he drew my attention, with 

 pardonable and justifiable pride, to the extensive culture and 

 great benefit derived from the dispersal of another salt bush 

 (A. semibaccata) over the alkaline plains of portions of California. 

 " Mr. W. Botting Hemsley, in an article in Nature last year, 

 dwelt upon this characteristic of Baron von Mueller, and upon 

 his devotion to what may be called the utilitarian aspects of 

 botany in the following words : — ' Mueller was much more than a 

 botanist and geographer ; he was always a promoter, and often 



