82 The South Australian Naturalist. 



grand old man, whose mind v/as a repository of profound 

 botanical knowledge, and who, although loaded with decora- 

 tions, never abated his strenuous labours to advance his science. 

 In ordinary life he did not look the baron pictured by the 

 romantic novelist ; he was indifferent to the cut of his clothes, 

 he boasted that he never owned a watch. But the seeker after 

 botanical or geographical information, however remote his 

 habitation or humble his circumstances, never appealed in vain 

 to Mueller. Every year in his own handwriting he answered 

 thousands of letters of enquiry, a task which, as age crept on, 

 became a severe tax on his physical strength. 



Mueller was one of the founders of the Royal Society of 

 Victoria, of the branch of the Geographical Society in Mel- 

 bourne, and of the Field Naturalists' Club. With Mr. Joseph 

 Bosisto he made important researches dealing with the medi- 

 cinal properties of eucalyptus oils. It was on his advice 

 that eucalyptus trees were planted in the marshy tracts of 

 countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea : this beneficent 

 work stayed or lessened the ravages of malaria among the 

 inhabitants of those lands. He laboured unceasingly to encour- 

 age forestry in Australia. 



The year 1896 was one of severe financial stress in 

 Victoria. The Baron, like all civil servants of that time, feared 

 retrenchment. Insomnia, worry, and other ills did their worst, 

 and he died at his residence, Arnold Street, South Yarra, early 

 in the morning of October 10, 1896. He was never married, 

 and the hereditary peerage, like the monarchy whence it came, 

 is now extinct. 



For nearly half a century he had lived in Australia, learn- 

 ing about its varied flora as probably no other brain will know- 

 it, and he had gone and "ta'en his wages," leaving alm.ost 

 nothing in the shape of material wealth, but bequeathing a 

 legacy of botanical knowledge that future students will cherish. 

 Over his grave in St. Kilda Cemetery his friends erected an 

 imposing monument to mark all that was mortal of one who, 

 like Browning's scholar, was 



"Still loftier than the world suspects, 

 Living and dying." 



