THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 87 



BARON VON MUELLER. 



Amongst the very numerous societies with which Baron von 

 Mueller was associated, there was probably none in which he was 

 beter known than in our Field Naturalists' Club. From its 

 formation he has been our patron ; probably every member has 

 been brought into personal, and many of us into continual 

 contact with him ; his name has been a household word amongst 

 us, and his memory will long be held in sincere and affectionate 

 respect. It is hard, indeed, to realize that a younger generation 

 must arise to whom the presence of the Baron, so familiar to us, 

 will only be a tradition. 



It is now just fifty years ago since he published the first of the 

 long series of monographs which were to make famous amongst 

 systematic botanists the name of the then unknown student, 

 Ferdinand Mueller. 



His father was Commissioner of Customs in the little town of 

 Rostock, and there he was born in 1825, and received his early 

 education, evidently intending from an early age to become a 

 pharmaceutical chemist ; in fact, his first employment was as 

 chemist's assistant in the town of Husum in Schleswig-Holstein. 

 From Rostock he went to study at the University of Kiel, where 

 he passed his pharmaceutical examination in 1846, his early 

 studies in which direction will explain the interest which he has 

 always taken in this department. 



Meanwhile, however, he had attended the botany lectures of 

 Professor Nolte, and with characteristic energy had set to work 

 studying and collecting in his spare time the plants of the island 

 of Sylt, and in 1846 he presented, as a thesis for the degree of 

 Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Kiel, a paper on 

 Capsella biorsa-pastoris, the common Shepherd's Purse. In the 

 same year he published in Flora, the journal of the Botanical 

 Society of Regensburg, in Bavaria, a more extensive paper on 

 the flora of Schleswig-Holstein, and though he was unable to 

 devote himself as yet entirely to his favourite study, it is evident 

 that his path in life was already clearly marked out for him, and 

 that, wherever he was or whatever occupation he might have to 

 follow, the study of botany would be his main object. 



Late in 1846, Dr. Preiss, a friend of the Mueller family, had 

 returned from a visit to Western Australia, and being acquainted 

 with the phthisical tendency of the student and his sisters, had 

 strongly urged their emigration to the more genial climate of the 

 sunny south. Accordingly Dr. Mueller and his sisters set sail, 

 and arrived in Port Adelaide in December, 1847. His capital 

 was limited mainly to his brains, so he had to find something to 

 do, and readily got and accepted employment in the chemist's 

 shop of Heuzenroeder, in Rundle-street. Adelaide was not then 

 what it is now, and one had not to go far afield to get beyond 



