Histograms showing the distribution (normalised to the maximum number of stars) of the |Z|-coordinate for the different spectral types. From top to bottom: normal N-type carbon stars (blue), extrinsic (black) and intrinsic (purple) S stars, J-type stars (red), and R-type stars (brown). The X-axis for the R-type stars is different. For N-type normal carbon stars, orange lines show exponential fits to the distribution with scale heights z_o = 260, 220, and 180 pc from top to bottom. Similar fits give an estimate of the scale-height for the other spectral types (see text). The bin size is 20 pc.