Bram.—On the Building Materials of Otago. 167 
ten to twelve feet at the base. Mr. Surveyor Innes states that the Waka- 
tipu red birches range from three to four feet six inches, but he has seen 
them at Te Anau from seven to nine; and six to eight feet trees are fre- 
quently met with on the Five Rivers Plain. The Burrwood Forest timber 
is about the same size as that at Lake Wakatipu, but the few trees on Inch 
Clutha are much smaller; the trunks average from twenty to thirty feet 
long, and two to three feet in diameter. Two red birch logs from the Blue 
Mountains, recently measured at the Inch Clutha Bridge, were respectively 
thirty-five feet long by two feet four inches in diameter, and thirty-eight feet 
long by two feet in diameter ; they were both quite cylindrical, straight, and 
sound throughout. The trees in a small patch of bush at West Taieri 
average about four feet diameter. 
The bark of young red birch is somewhat like that of mature silver birch, 
but on old trees it is from half an inch to an inch and a quarter thick, of a 
dark reddish-brown colour, very rough on the surface, and cut up into deep 
vertical furrows as close as they can be. The leaf is of an oval shape, from 
three-eighths of an inch to an inch and a half long, very thin and flexible 
but provided with projecting ribs or veins. The edge is serrated at regular 
intervals with generally a curved indentation, but they vary very much. 
Dr. Hooker says that Mr. Travers sent him leaves of F. fusca that were quite 
entire, and I have seen specimens from Lake Wakatipu in which the teeth 
were only noticeable on close inspection. The smaller leaves of red birch can 
scarcely be distinguished from the large ones of silver birch, but the whole 
foliage of the former is more open, spreading, and pendulous than that of 
the latter. Although there is sometimes very little difference in the leaves, 
and even in the appearance of the wood of F. fusca and F. menziesii, there 
is always a great difference in the quality of the wood. Mr. Kirk a short 
time since kindly identified a number of specimens for me; I could see very 
little difference in some that he had referred to as separate species, but the 
correctness of his classification was afterwards verified in a very remarkable 
manner: Two trees were found in the West Taieri Bush that had been 
felled on the same day four years ago—one was rotten and the other quite 
sound. Their foliage, which still remains intact, is to the casual observer 
the same, but, on comparing them with Mr. Kirk’s specimens, the rotten 
tree is found to be F. menziesii, and the sound one F. fusca, a result aig 
in keeping with the respective characters of the timbers. 
Red birch, like its congeners already described, grows freely under 
eultivation, and reproduces itself rapidly in its native forest. A tree four 
feet diameter is estimated to be from 300 to 350 years of age. The timber 
is free from twists or bends, but is subject to heart decay, like cedar and 
totara. All the larger trees that have passed maturity are more or less 
affected in this way. 
