24 INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 



" display keen powers of observation, and are not so well known as 

 they ought to be." 



Contemporaneously with Stutchbury, the Rev. W. B. Clarke 

 was employed by the Government, commencing September, 1851, 

 to ascertain the probabilities of the existence of ^old in various 

 parts of the colony. He arrived in New South Wales in 1839, 

 being then 41 years of age ; his labors as a geologist commenced 

 some time before leaving the home country, and his first paper on 

 Australian geology was communicated in 1842,''' but he had already 

 commenced the collection of rocks, fossils, and minei'als, he having 

 presented, in 1844, a set to the Woodwardian Museum of Cam- 

 bridge University. In 1845 he accompanied Beete Jukes to various 

 geological sections around Sydney, and much of the latter's definite 

 account of the Carboniferous rocks of that part of New South Wales 

 is traceable to Clarke; Leichhardt, in 1846, acknowledged his 

 obligations to him. The part which he played in the discovery of 

 gold I have already alluded to, and to it may be added that of tin in 

 1 849. He did great good in educating the Government to understand 

 how much the mineral resources of the colony were identified with 

 the development of the knowledge of its rocks and minerals, and 

 to him is chiefly due the credit of the estiblishment of a geological 

 survey. Clarke contributed largely to the elaboration of the Siluro- 

 Devonian and Carboniferous rocks in New South Wales and 

 Queensland, and of the Cretaceous in Queensland. He was essen- 

 tially a practical man, and while not caring very much about 

 contributing to scientific knowledge for its own sake, yet he took 

 a very keen interest in the progress of palaeontological research in 

 Australia, and his collection of Palaeozoic fossiis formed the subject 

 of a detailed Avorkf by Professor de Koninck, of Liege. The 

 majority of his papers and reports were written in the interest of 

 the mineral resources of the colony, and embrace an area of 

 100,000 square miles. Whilst respecting the enthusiasm of younger 

 workers he was not always in sympathy with them, and allowed 

 himself to be led into controversies, concerning the merits of which 

 it is not fitting to enter here. He was elected F.R.S. in 1876, and 

 was awarded the Murchison Medal of the Geological Society in 

 1877, "in recognition of his remarkable services in the investi- 

 gation of the older rocks of New South Wales." His last 

 contribution to the geological literature of Australia, '• The 

 Sedimentary Formations of New South Wales," w^as published in 



• Oa the Fossil Pine Forest of Lnke Macquarie, Proc. Geol. Soc, vol. 4, 1843. 

 + " Recherches sur les Fossiles Palaeozoiques de la Nouvelle Galles du Sud." 1876-77. 



