Tol.  49.]  AXXIVEESAEY  ADDEESS  OE  THE  PEESJDEXT. 
57 
discoveries  of  small  samples  of  gold  at  various  times,  it  is  a  singular 
circumstance  that  Count  Strzelecki's  work  on  New  South  Wales, 
published  in  1845,  contains  no  allusion  to  the  presence  of  gold  in 
the  rocks  of  that  country.  However,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  the 
subject  of  the  present  notice  was  the  first  practical  discoverer  of 
gold  in  Australia,  and  as  such  received  man}’  valuable  gifts  and 
testimonials.  He  was  made  Commissioner  of  Crown  Lands  in  New 
South  Wales,  and  on  his  vacating  that  office  the  Legislative  Council 
awarded  him  <£10,000,  a  sum  which  he  considered  scarcely  adequate, 
bearing  in  mind  the  enormous  amount  of  wealth  that  his  discoverv 
had  brought  to  that  colony. 
In  1854  we  find  Hr.  Hargraves  in  England,  and  in  the  following 
year  he  brought  out  his  work  on  Australia  and  its  Gold  Fields, 
which  was  published  in  London.  In  that  year  also  he  became  a 
Fellow  of  the  Geological  Society,  though  we  do  not  appear  to  have 
received  any  papers  at  his  hands.  Nevertheless,  he  was  evidently 
a  man  with  considerable  powers  of  observation,  a  geologist  by 
instinct,  as  it  were,  and  the  chapter  which  treats  of  the  scientific 
and  practical  discoveries  of  gold  in  Australia  is  an  interesting 
geological  disquisition. 
We  do  not  know  much  of  his  later  life,  though  it  is  said  that 
throughout  his  career  he  was  more  remarkable  for  generosity 
than  prudence.  The  25th  anniversary  of  the  great  gold  discovery 
was  duly  kept  at  Sydney  in  1876,  shortly  before  which  event  the 
Parliament  of  New  South  Wales  granted  him  a  pension  for  his 
services.  In  the  Queen’s  Jubilee  year,  being  the  36th  since  the 
discovery  of  gold  in  New  South  Wales,  then  comprising  the  Colony 
of  Victoria,  he  made  a  last  appeal  to  the  Legislature  of  the  latter 
colony  to  fulfil  their  obligations  towards  him,  obligations  which  they 
had  admitted  but  never  discharged.  Whether  or  no  he  was  suc¬ 
cessful  in  this  application  is  unknown  to  me. 
He  died,  presumably  at  Sydney,  on  October  30th,  1891,  at 
the  age  of  75.  The  announcement  of  his  death  did  not  reach  this 
Society  until  the  autumn  of  the  following  year. 
Johx  Htjeeay,  the  third  of  that  name,  was  born  in  London  on  the 
16th  April,  1808.  He  received  his  early  education  at  Charterhouse, 
and  proceeded  thence  to  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  where  his 
attention  was  much  drawn  to  Natural  Science.  In  1828,  at  the 
early  age  of  20,  he  joined  his  father’s  business,  as  one  of  the  firm  of 
well-known  publishers  in  Albemarle  Street,  and  in  the  same  year  he 
VOL.  XLIX. 
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