detrital deposits and in the quartz reefs west of the Blue Mountains, the same area where McBrien had found it, and he declared his belief in its abundance. Mr R Lowe, Lieutenant William Lawson, an unnamed convict (who was flogged for the discovery), Dr Johann Lhotsky, and "Count" Paul Strzelecki had also found gold in Australia before Clarke. It appears they mostly had found alluvial flakes, whereas Clarke had found it embedded in quartz rocks. Early in 1844 he showed the governor of New South Wales, Sir George Gipps, some specimens of gold he had found. Sir George asked him where he had got it, and when Clarke told him said "Put it away or we shall have our throats cut". Clarke, in his evidence before the select committee on his claims, which sat in 1861, stated that he knew of the existence of the gold in 1841. Clarke, however, agreed with Gipps that it may not be wise to announce the presence of gold in the colony. Clarke continued his clerical duties, but was occasionally lent to the government to carry out geological investigations. In 1849 he made the first discovery of tin in Australia and in 1859 he made known the occurrence of diamonds. He discovered secondary (Cretaceous) fossils in Queensland in 1860, he was also the first to indicate the presence of Silurian rocks, and to determine the age of the coal-bearing rocks in New South Wales. In 1869 he announced the discovery of remains of Dinornis in Queensland. He finished the preparation of the fourth edition of his Remarks on the Sedimentary Formations of New South Wales on his eightieth birthday, and died a fortnight later on 16 June 1878. He was buried in the St Thomas cemetery, the graveyard of the North Shore church he was rector of for many years; and his widow and some descendants and relatives are close by. Legacy Clarke was a trustee of the Australian Museum at Sydney, and an active member of the Royal Society of New South Wales of which he was vice-president 1866–1878; the Clarke Medal awarded by the Society is named in his honour. In 1860 he published Researches in the Southern Gold Fields of New South Wales. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1876, and in the following year was awarded the Murchison Medal by the Geological Society of London. His contributions