Miscellaneous. 103 
fragments of gold and blue sapphire, to the amount apparently of 
one fiftieth part—the former often united with quartz, and more 
or less covered by an opaque uncrystalline substance of a yellow- 
red colour, like that about the “ gold-quartz” of California. 
This is the first time out of the many “ sea-bottoms ” examined 
from different parts of the world that I have found gold present; and 
as the Seychelle Islands are composed of granite, it seems to me 
desirable, when the opportunity offers, that they should be pro- 
spected for “‘ auriferous quartz.” 
To the different forms of sponge-spicules, which prove to me that 
the “dust” came from this Huplectella, I shall advert on a future 
occasion. 
On a new Marsupial from Australia. 
By Prof. R. Owen, F.RS. &e. 
The Australian marsupial, the subject of my note in the ‘ Annals 
and Magazine of Natural History’ for December 1877. I have since 
found described in the ‘ Proceedings of the Linnean Society of 
New South Wales,’ Sydney, 1876, p. 33, under the name of Hypsi- 
prymnodon moschatus, by the accomplished Curator of the Australian 
Museum, Sydney, E. Pierson Ramsey, F.L.S., C.M.Z.S. 
Metamorphosis of the Cantharis (Cantharis (Lytta) vesicatoria). 
By M. Licurensrer. 
For a long time the entomologists of all countries have sought to 
discover the transformations of the Cantharis. In 1837 M. Mul- 
sant, of Lyons, said, in his ‘ Histoire des Vesicants,’ ‘‘The study 
of the metamorphoses of the Cantharides will furnish the subject of 
a curious chapter to the naturalist who shall succeed in tracing their 
development.” 
Since this period I have investigated this question; and now, at 
length, I believe I can give the entire history from the egg to the 
upa. 
On the 27th of June I took numerous Cantharides from the ash, 
selecting fecundated females having the abdomen distended with 
eggs. ‘Two or three days afterwards they set to work to dig into 
the earth in the vessel in which I kept them, and, in the little 
cylindrical holes they formed, deposited masses of from fifty to sixty 
egos and more, agglomerated together, and of a hyaline whiteness. 
About seven days after the oviposition there issued from these eggs 
larvee, called by Léon Dufour Zriungulini, and figured by Réaumur, 
Ratzeburg, and Mulsant. They are 1 millim. in length, and of a 
dark brown colour, with the two segments of the meso- and meta- 
thorax and the first segment of the abdomen whitish. The abdo- 
men is terminated by two long filaments. This was previously 
known. 
After a thousand fruitless trials, I succeeded in getting these 
larvee to accept an artificial nourishment, consisting of the stomachs 
of bees which had just sucked the juices of flowers. These larvee 
