24 Australian Plants. 
as well as the bracteolae smooth. Male flowers central 
pedicellate. Sepals smooth, the three externals coherent at 
the base; the three internals concert in a long tube, the free 
lobes bearing a gland. Stamens six inserted to the limbus. 
Anthers bilocular, introrse. Female flowers marginal on 
short pedicels, destitute cf a calyx. Style, one, short, with 
three filiform stigmata. Capsule smooth, tricoccous, loculicide 
dehiscent. Seeds in the cells solitary, smooth, not costulate, 
of the structure of Eriocaulon. 
This genus is chiefly characterised by the want of the floral 
envelope in the female flowers, but agrees otherwise in habit 
and structure with Eriocaulon. The name is derived from 
the colour and shining transparency of the seeds, not unlike 
that of amber. 
50. Electrosperma Australasicum. 
On wet places along the Murray, towards the junction of 
the Murrumbidgee. te 
A small annual scapebearing herb.. Leaves grass-like, fene- 
strate nerved, pellucid. Scape monocephalous, vaginat at the 
base. 
Art. III.—On the comparative value and durability of the 
Building Materials in use in Melbourne. By Robert Brough 
Smyth. 
THE selection of building materials has always been a work of 
difficulty, as indeed is every branch of knowledge, where the 
experience of a single individual is substituted for those simple 
principles which arise naturally from an accumulation of facts, 
—not the records of one life time, but of many,—not of one 
department of science, but of all. The mistakes that have 
been made from time to time, as evidenced in the decay of 
_some of the finest architectural works in Europe, have drawn’ 
considerable attention to the subject of late years; and that 
such mistakes may, in a great measure, be provided against, 
if not wholly prevented, we have the evidence of the Scientific 
Commission appointed to examine the stone to be used in the 
New Houses of Parliament, and of the Corps of Royal En- 
gineers, whose sound and practical observations, founded on 
actual experiments, are worthy of the highest consideration. 
It not only has immediate reference to the conservation of 
those edifices wherein the genius of the architect is para- 
