Having alluded to the natives, I may here mention a singular custom that came under notice some time after, at the Protectorate in the valley of the Loddon, in the vicinity of Melbourne. Several women were observed having their faces completely concealed by their opossum-skin mantles. Not satisfied with this moreover, in passing a party of men, they moved in a sidelong manner, so as to render it impossible, even if the covering came to be displaced, that their faces should be seen. In the evening at the Corobbery, these persons, three in number, were seated in the circle of women, so as to have their backs turned to the dancers or actors, their faces still being wholly concealed. They remained 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 North-West from Melbourne, there has been discovered, I was informed, 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 leading 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 selecting land from a map of this country, half of our road lying 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. MANNA.