MANNA. 285 



seated, motionless, taking no part in the singing 

 or the gestures of encouragement indulged in by 

 the other women. It was subsequently explained 

 by a protector, that these were women who had 

 daughters betrothed to the men of their tribe, and 

 that during the period of betrothment the mothers 

 are always thus rigidly veiled. 



Near Mount Macedon, thirty miles N.W. from 

 Melbourne, there has been discovered, I was in- 

 formed, a quarry of marble of a very fine quality ; 

 and in the same neighbourhood is an extinct crater. 

 The formation at and in the immediate vicinity of 

 Melbourne, is of tertiary deposits associated with 

 arenaceous older rocks. 



We returned to the ships by a short route lead- 

 ing direct from Melbourne to the northern shore of 

 Hobson's Bay. During the walk I was much 

 struck with the great risk that people run in select- 

 ing land from a map of this country, half of our 

 road Ivino; over a rich loam, and the other half over 

 soft sand. The trees swarmed with large locusts 

 (the cicada), quite deafening us with their shrill 

 buzzing noise. We found the branches of these 

 trees and the ground underneath strewed over with 

 a white substance resembling small flakes of snow, 

 called by the colonists manna. I am aware that an 

 erroneous idea exists that this matter is deposited 

 by the locusts ; but in fact it is an exudation from 

 the Eucalyptus j and although I saw it beneath 

 another kind of tree, it must have been carried there 

 by the wind. A different sort, of a pale yellow 



