lii Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



Pillar Eock in Wastdale. Clarke, always a traveller, during long vacations 

 went further afield. In the earlier years he visited Scotland, once going as 

 far as Skye ; in 1862 he visited Madeira ; several visits, usually as one of 

 a climbing party, were paid to the Alps, the last of these being made in 

 1865. Mountain adventure was not, however, the only object of his 

 journeys ; his private herbarium shows that during all of them he was an 

 assiduous botanical collector. While engaged in his favourite occupation in 

 Madeira, his inexplicable presence on a lonely hillside and the aberrant 

 nature of his attire led to his being arrested as an escaped prisoner. 



Clarke's most sustained botanical work while he was a resident Fellow of 

 Queen's was done, however, in England and chiefly in his own country, 

 Northern Hampshire. The results were embodied in a list of the flowering 

 plants of Andover, his birthplace ; this list, completed before he left for 

 India, was printed at Calcutta in 1866, shortly after his arrival there. The 

 modest title and remote origin of this first contribution to what was now to 

 be his favourite science failed to conceal the independence with which the 

 subject had been treated, and the trenchant criticism which it evoked led to 

 a reply which showed that in Clarke the reviewer had to deal with no mean 

 antagonist. 



The work of an Indian Inspector of Schools involves much touring during 

 a considerable part of the year, and affords opportunities for a study of the 

 flora of the country traversed hardly to be surpassed. Of these opportunities 

 Clarke took full advantage during his service in Bengal and Assam, 

 supplementing them as occasion offered by vacation visits to districts and 

 provinces other than those within which his duties lay. During the first 

 two years and a half of his Eastern service Clarke travelled extensively in 

 East Bengal, where the physical conditions are such that the only practical 

 mode of conveyance is by boat. The considerable collections he had 

 amassed, and the bulk of his other belongings, were lost, early in 1868, by 

 the wreck of the country boat which for the time being he had practically 

 made his home ; his own safety was due to his being a powerful swimmer. 

 Undiscouraged, he began afresh, and besides collecting largely in his own 

 division, was able to visit the Khasia Hills, Tipperah and Chittagong. He 

 occasionally complained that, owing to the pressure of official and adminis- 

 trative duties at the Botanical Garden, he was able to do " less real botanical 

 work during a year of his superintendentship than he could accomplish in 

 a month of his travelling appointment." Still his temporary connection 

 with the Cinchona Department gave him an opportunity of studying the 

 flora of temperate Sikkim, enabled him to pay his first visit to the high 

 Himalayan passes, and led incidentally to his making a journey in Madras 

 and the Nilgiris. His transfer to Calcutta in 1874 permitted him to 

 partially explore the Sundribun forests of the Gauge tic Delta, to visit Chutia 

 Nagpur and to make a holiday tour in the Punjab Himalaya. When 

 Darjeeling became his headquarters he was enabled to make three more 

 tours in Alpine Sikkim, to investigate temperate British Bhutan, to study 



