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in that island, has been appointed Curator of the Botanic. Station 
at Belize, British Heu ras. He was to leave Jamaica for Belize at 
the eves of Octo 
e will be 
experimental cultivation of coffee and cacao and in training native boys 
in horticultural work. Mr. Hartley spent a short time at Kew on his. 
way to West Africa 
ws of the unexpected death on October 9th of the eminent 
Pees botanist, Str FERDINAND von MUELLER, reached London 
on Oc tober 10th. In this Erin some record should be given of his con- 
nection with Kew and his services to the establishment during a period . 
of nearly 50 years. 
F. Mueller was born at Rostock in 1825, educated at Kiel, and began 
his botanieal career by devoting several years to the investigation. of 
the Flora of Schleswig-Holst ein. In bi IET of sympto oms of 
the announcement. But it may, perhaps, be reputed as a significant 
fact that no written communication accompani ied the packet, though it 
was addressed in ap own hand. A late ail Sain 19) has brought 
further news from him, but no reference to indisposition 
In the official correspondence of the period of Sir William Hooker's 
torship , the first communication from Mueller is dated 
the number of species at 10, 000. He aiso proposed an MAR aca of 
ideas, an exchange of plants and seeds, and requested assistance in the 
revision and publication of his manuscripts relating to the flora of the 
continent. The correspondence thus begun has been continued with 
rnal 
neeasing outpour of papers, Publ ished in Ee merous vomit and 
Cold periodicals, and by many important independent works, to specify 
which would fill pages of the Bulletin. From the very beginning of 
his career and ae he most liberally supplied Kew with sets of 
plants collected by himself on his various journeys, amounting to some 
25,000 miles, and by others, at his instigation and often partly at his 
expense. His two first consignments, received in the fifties, exceeded 
2000 species. The most extended journey he made was as botanist to 
- the Gregory Expedition, across North Australia; and his narrative of 
oe breue in Zooker's Kew Journal of Botany, vols. viii. and ix., is 
. one of his most i nteresting contributions to our knowledge of the vegeta- 
ion actual observation, In one of these communica- 
Hirira 
receive, meres the whole of: the specimens of every 
