INTERVIEWS WITH NATURALISTS 



are already familiar to your ears. Alexander McLeay 

 lives, you know, with his family, residing in a splendid 

 mansion about two miles out of Sydney, near the borders 

 of one of the coves of Port Jackson. He is a venerable 

 old man, his remaining locks, for he is partially bald, now 

 white with age. He has a rather large, portly frame, and 

 unites in his countenance kindness and cheerfulness, with 

 an expression commanding respect and even reverence. 

 I saw him one evening occupying the chair as presiding 

 officer at a missionary meeting in Sydney ; and how de- 

 lightful it was to find a man who has been so eminent 

 in politics and science combining religion with his other 

 qualities ! He tells me that he is now in his seventy-third 

 year. His wife still lives, and is a fine, matronly old 

 lady, well becoming such a husband. Wm. S. McLeay, 

 his son, is better known to you as the author of the cir- 

 cular system of classification ; though by the by I have 

 heard it suggested that his father helped him to some of 

 the ideas. Though not a man of striking superiority in 

 his general physiognomy or in the first of a conversation 

 with him, his broad forehead and sharp piercing eye in- 

 dicate the deep thought and philosophical mind which are 

 so evident in his writings. 



" Another name, with which you have long been con- 

 versant, and, as I now learn, one with whom you corre- 

 spond, is the Rev. W. B. Clarke of London memory. 

 We have spent many days together and for a week geol- 

 ogized in company over the mountains of the Illiwawa 

 district. He is a strange man for a clergyman. Geology 

 certainly comes first with him ; next theology. . . . 

 He is very enthusiastic in his geological pursuits and in- 

 tends soon to give the geological world an account of the 

 rocks of New South Wales. ... I find he has been 

 a very voluminous writer, having edited a religious maga- 

 zine, besides attending to his theological duties, his geo- 

 logical observation, and all his' various speculations on 

 various subjects which have tired many a reader of Lon- 

 don. An article of four hundred pages, he informs me, 

 he is about publishing in the Geological Transactions on 

 the Crag of Suffolk." 



On the return of his comrades from their dangerous 



