The last three years had also made great additions to the buildings of William Town; but Melbourne had so increased that we hardly knew it again. Wharfs and stores fronted the banks of the Yarra-yarra; whilst further down, tanners and soap-boilers had established themselves on either side, where, formerly, had been tea-tree thickets, from which the cheerful pipe of the bell-bird greeted the visitor. Very different, however, were now the sights, and sounds, and smells, that assailed our senses; the picturesque wilderness had given place to the unromantic realities of industry; and the reign of business had superseded that of poetry and romance.
MANNA.
Near Melbourne I again noticed the manna mentioned above, but had no opportunity of making further observations upon it. Mr. Bynoe, however, having since visited Australia, has turned his attention to the subject, and the result of his experience, which will be found below, tends to overthrow the opinion I have previously expressed, to the effect, that this substance is the exudation of a tree, not the deposit of an insect.*
(*Footnote. There is a prevailing opinion in some parts of New Holland, particularly on the east side, that the gumtrees distil a peculiar form of manna, which drops at certain seasons of the year. I have heard it from many of the inhabitants, who, on a close investigation, could only say, that it was to be found adhering to the old and young bark of the trees, as well as strewed on the ground beneath.
In the month of December, about the warmest period of the year, during my rambles through the forest in search of insects, I met with this manna in the above-mentioned state, but could never find in any part of the bark a fissure or break whence such a substance could flow. Wherever it appeared, moreover, the red-eyed cicadae were in abundance. I was inclined to think that the puncture produced by these suctorial insects into the tender shoots for juice, would in all probability give an exit for such a substance; but by wounding the tender branches with a sharp-pointed knife, I could never obtain a saccharine fluid or substance. It was the season when the cicadae were abundantly collected together for reproduction; and on warm, clear, still days, they clung to the more umbrageous parts, particularly to trees that, having been deprived of old limbs, shot forth vigorous stems, thickly clustered with leaves. To one of these, in which the male insects were making an intolerable noise, I directed my steps, and quietly sheltered myself from a hot wind that was crossing the harbour, bringing with it a dense column of smoke, which for a short time shut out the powerful rays of the sun. I found that the ground about the root of the tree was thinly covered with the sugar-like substance, and in a few minutes I felt that a fluid was dropping, which soon congealed on my clothes into a white substance. On rising cautiously to ascertain from whence it came, with a full determination not to disturb the insects but to watch their pursuits, I observed that it was passing of a syrup-like consistence per anum from the cicadae. As it ran down the smooth branches of the gumtree and over the leaves it gradually congealed, and formed a white efflorescence. Whilst ejecting this fluid, the insect raised the lower part of the abdomen and passed off three or four drops in sudden jets, which either streamed down the stem, or fell on the leaves or ground.
I watched them for nearly half an hour, and in that space of time observed between twenty and thirty distil this fluid, which gradually concreted into a white substance. I collected above three ounces, some of which I still have in my possession. The natives gather it in their rush baskets and use it as a part of their food.)
RED BLUFF.
Leaving Hobson's Bay we passed along the east shore of Port Phillip in search of a ledge of rocks, reported to lie about three miles off Red Bluff, which is eight miles to the southward of the above-mentioned bay. We, however, found this danger to be nothing more than the extreme of the reef fronting that bluff for a distance of half a mile, in a West by North direction, and which has three feet on it at low-water, with three fathoms just outside. As the soundings gradually decrease to this depth, the lead will always keep a ship clear of it.
Anchoring under Arthur's Seat, I delivered the letters with which Mr. Powlett, Commissioner of Crown Lands at Melbourne, had kindly furnished me, to the different settlers in the neighbourhood, requesting them to afford me every assistance in my contemplated visit to Cape Shanck, for the purpose of determining its position.
DR. BARKER.