Mabberley, Plant introduction and hybridisation in colonial NSW 
551 
the embroiled Hooker. In January 1848 Bidwill appeared in FitzRoy's despatch to 
Grey as eligible for public appointment having been 'Acting Colonial Botanist'**®. 
Bidwill continued in his November letter**'* to Hooker, 'Imagine then my disgust at 
seeing in [Lindley's] Gardeners' Chronicle of the 3rd July [p. 439] a paragraph stating 
that Mr Charles Moore was appointed to the Gardens at Sydney — 1 know nothing of 
Mr C. Moore but I can assure his friends that he must be a very discerning person 
indeed if the Council vote his salary next year — there are plenty of late precedents in 
this Colony to show that the Government here is not strong enough to carry money 
votes for Officers even if appointed by the Colonial Secretary in Downing Street — 
I write this purposely before I see Mr Moore because I do not wish to be biased for or 
against him before I tell you the facts of the case & to show you that if Mr Moore finds 
himself in difficulties when he comes here he will have his friends in England to thank 
for it — Here am 1, a person who has done a great deal for Gardening & the advance 
of Botany in this Colony, who has introduced more plants at my own expense than 
almost any other person ... in fact have always been employed for the benefit of my 
fellow colonists in this way — I am consequently nominated by the Legislative Council 
of the Colony to fill a situation which will enable me to continue [that] which my 
reduced means [would not otherwise allow]'. Even though he considered that Moore 
had never done anything for the Colony nor even England (he was a Scot), Bidwill 
was prepared to do what he could in the matter of the salary for Moore but 'if he is 
a nobody appointed mainly through political influence, why he may take his chance'. 
In January he wrote again to Hooker* as Hooker had sent copies of letters relating 
to the Moore affair to Bidwill's father, but also explaining that the contents of a case 
of plants sent from Kew, save a few gladioli had perished in transit, Bidwill explaining 
that they should not be crowded or wet when the cases are sealed. Of the Moore 
affair he wrote, 'When the Governor heard that through his mismanagement, 1 had 
been suspended in my situation at the Gardens he expressed himself very much 
annoyed at it and said he would give me something else — I asked him to appoint 
me Commissioner of Crown Land at Wide Bay ]now part of Queensland] to the 
extreme north of the Colony', which he duly did, in November 1848'*'. Despite this 
he was still asking Hooker for plants for the Colony, mainly fruit trees including 
Brazil nuts but also Mexican pines and Hedychium gardncriamim, now naturalized in 
NSW and Queensland. 
On Moore's arrival, Bidwill wrote once more to Hooker explaining that he had tried 
to be helpful but 'I do not expect he will prove to be the very best sort of person who 
could have been sent — he appears to me to only know what he has been taught 
and not to have any real knowledge of botany, nor has he any enthusiasm''*1 In 
February 1848, he returned to New Zealand for two months* and sent Hooker 
material including descriptions of conifers and other trees*"*; he had already bought 
and now sent some of the dried plants collected in Australia by Mitchell which 
Hooker may not have seen before as they had all gone to Lindley. Indeed Bidwill 
had complained of the inaccessibility of Mitchell's plants in his earlier correspondence. 
Macarthur, sending two seedlings of Araucaria bidivillii he had raised from seeds with 
notes on their germination, wrote to Hooker'*® 'What a pretty mess they have made 
with the appointment of Mr Moore at the Botanic Gardens'. Bidwill got a £300 salary 
in his new post and Council 'expressed themselves strongly' about his being superseded 
by Moore whose 'excessive arrogance & conceit wanted taking down'* and there 
followed some regrettable verbal exchanges. He now wrote to Lindley for the first 
time*"' with a case of living material including seedlings of A. bidivillii and Bidwill's 
hybrid Hibiscus (these also being sent with many plants of Dendrobium kingianum to 
Loddiges, Bidwill having sent four A. bidivillii plants to the Calcutta Botanic Garden, 
