_ those great depths of rock which brought the local names of 
a 
oe _ asthe most valuable coal deposits of Great Britain, notwithst 
_ Keld to belong to the Mesozoic epoch. 
18 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 
believe, in acknowledgment of this department of Mr. Clarke's 
labour that the Murchison medal of the Geological Society of 
London, of which he had been a member for half a century, was 
conferred upon him in February, 1877. The President, in presente 
ing the medal, said that it was in recognition of Mr. Clarke's “re-_ 
markable services in the investigation of the older rocks of New 
South Wales,—services which have led to a correct knowledge of the — 
succession of the formations in that country, and which have been 
of great value to the community. Mr. Clarke’s labours date back — 
nearly half a century, and he had contributed several interesting — 
essays on points of British geology before he commenced his 
arduous work amongst the coal-bearing strata of his adopted 
country. Influenced by the love of scientific investigation, and 
aided by a self-reliant and independent character, he surveyed 
Hawkesbury, Wianamatta, and Newcastle, before the geological 
world as land-marks in an apparently anomalous series of strata 
His survey, the result of years of patient labour, was so exact, that 
in spite of former unsparing criticism, it is now universally recog: 
nizedas correct; and his deductions as to the relative value of marine - 
and plant-bearing strata, in estimating the ages of formation, — 
5 poate the age webs our coal, and details the reasons that . 
: the occurrence of Glossopteris, which in other parte of the ¥0 
(ee 
