Miscellanea. b49 
1848, when I explained my views to Earl Grey,* then Minister of the 
Colonies, informing him of fresh confirmations of them from Victoria Land 
as well as Sydney, and referring him back to the comparison of 1844, and 
to the anticipation of quantities of gold-ore in 1846—hoth of which pub- 
lications, I need not remind you, were anterior to the discovery of the 
Californian gold (1847). Such printed documents, followed by an official 
letter of November, 1848, which is registered in the Colonial Office, prove, 
I apprehend, that your President was the person who, by inductive zeason- 
ing, and acomparison of the rocks of two very distant countries, anticipated 
the production of the Australian gold; and I here record the fact, because 
the view would never have been promulgated had you not, gentlemen, 
honoured me with this chair, and thus incited me to do my duty, and 
show the usefulness of our science, by comparing two distant meridian 
chains of the earth, one of which belonged to our own country. 
I must here, however, do justice to my friend and associate in the 
Geological Society, the Rev. W. B. Clarke, who, for a long time resident 
in the colony of New South Wales, played a prominent part in the dis- 
covery of the gold some years before profitable works were opened by Mr. 
Hargraves in 1851. Mr. Clarke states, that as early as 1841 he expressed 
his opinion to persons there, to whom he refers, that the colony would 
prove to be a “ gold country.” Believing in the accuracy of his decla- 
tation, I must be permitted to say, that as no one in England was made 
acquainted with his views, and as the first printed document which bears 
his name is dated in 1847, he will doubtless admit that the published com- 
parative and indu¢tive reasonings of 1844-6, by which the anticipation was 
arrived at here, were wholly irrespective of his local and unpublished con- 
yersations. In truth, no geologist who returned from Australia before 
the year 1847 had ever adverted to the occurrence of gold ore in these 
colonies. 
For my own part, however, I would in no way derogate from the inde- 
pendent merit of Mr. Clarke, and [I trust that in the colony on whose 
geological structure he has thrown much light, and in*which he is now 
exploring the extension of the gold ore, he may long enjoy the credit to 
which he is justly entitled, for having there roused attention to the phe- 
nomenon. 
The extent to which gold has been worked in our Australian colonies is 
to be seen generally in a compendious map, inserted in a small work on 
the general distribution of gold over the world, by our associate, Mr. Wyld, 
chiefly taken from the instructive work of M. Adolf Erman; and when 
new and more detailed maps are produced, which are in preparation by Mr. 
* Earl Grey did not take any steps in this matter, because, as his 
Lordship has since informed me, he feared that the discovery of gold would 
be very embarrassing to a wool-growing colony. Colonel Helmersen has 
not printed anything on the Australian gold; but I introduced his name 
into my Cornish letter to Sir C. Lemon, and hence it became known in the 
Australian colonies. 
