806 Transactions.—Botany. 
` and good after being sixteen years in use. Some of the telegraph poles of 
the first line erected in the Waimakariri Country were furnished by this 
species; those fixed in dry soils perished in four or five years, while those 
driven in swamps remained sound for a much longer period. Similar 
results have been obtained with fencing posts furnished by mountain beech. 
Fagus blairii, n. s. 
Blair’s Beech. 
(Vide ante, p. 297. Pl. xvi.) 
Hitherto this species has been confused with the mountain beech, 
although its differential characters are easily recognized. It has been 
observed in the valley of the Dart and other places about Lake Wakatipu, 
and by the Little Grey River at elevations between 1,000 and 2,000 feet ; 
also I believe on the Five Rivers Plain. 
Usually it attains rather larger dimensions than mountain beech, being 
from 40 to 60 feet high: it is easily distinguished from that species by the - 
ovate apiculate leaves clothed with appressed fulvous tomentum beneath in 
the mature state. 
The habit and spray of this species more closely approaches I’. sylvatica 
of Europe than any other New Zealand species. 
At present nothing is known as to the durability of the timber, which in 
appearance resembles that of mountain beech. 
