432 AUSTRALIAN NATIVE PLANTS. 
practice with the Railway Department being not to paint its 
passenger stock, but to varnish), but in other respects we 
consider it, if not equal, second only to Blackwood for the 
purpose named. 
It should be felled during the winter months, when it has 
attained maturity, and is at stump height, say between 4 and sft. 
diameter. For six months it might so remain before being broken 
down into plank for seasoning. The Otway Forest, Mirboo, 
and Narbethong were visited by a contingent of the Board, and 
both this timber and Blackwood were found in those localities 
to be of very superior quality, of large size, and abundant. 
Mountain Ash may be found of the finest quality in the ranges of 
felspar porphyry formation in the Upper Yarra district, especially 
those bordering the valley of the Watts.” (These are all 
Victorian localities.) 
A slab of the normal species in the Technological Museum, 
obtained from Victoria, is a very sound timber, close in the grain, 
and good to work. It is of a brown colour, and has a neat, and 
even pretty figure, disposed in stripes. 
As illustrative of the durability of the timber of this species, 
Dr. Crowther, of Tasmania, showed at the New Zealand Exhibi- 
tion of 1865 portions of stumps which had been felled thirty-two 
years (the stumps remaining in the ground), and except on the 
surface, they were as sound as if they had been freshly felled. A 
charred fence-post of the same wood which had stood in Burnt 
Island for thirty-eight years was in the same condition. But 
Baron Mueller (Zucalyptographia) expressly states: ‘It has 
not been found very lasting underground . . ._ indeed 
the stems, when fallen, perish more quickly than those of 
many other Eucalypts, and thus the records of individual trees 
of marvellous height, when measured lying on the ground, are 
often early lost.’ 
There is another timber (at present at least included under 
E.. amygdalina) which is very durable, especially under water. A 
specimen (in the Technological Museum), which formed part of 
the spoke of a mill-wheel for twenty years, and afterwards for a 
year was lying exposed to the weather, shows no signs of decay. 
