Consequently in forty-one years the trunk had increased at the rate of one inch of radius in sixty-one years at the ground, in 123 years at the level of two feet, in 117 years at four feet five, and 151 at five feet three, where the main branches arose. A diagram of the trunk so closely resembles that of the Ormiston-Hall yew as to render its production here a useless repetition. That the increase at the base is the true measure of the growth relative to its own successive ages, and to the growth of other aged yews, is in some measure confirmed by data obtained by Mr Bowman in a totally different manner. He took from "a horizontal section,”—at what elevation he does not mention,-five cylindrical portions by means of a trephine capable of penetrating three inches into the trunk; and he found that these specimens indicated severally 36, 44, 45, 47, 50 years for every inch of growth of the exterior part of the tree. The average of these numbers gives an inch for 445 years.

I have obtained comparative measurements, with an equally long interval of time, of two other well-known ancient English yews not inferior in size to that of Gresford. But unfortunately in one the all-important ground line was not included in the early measurement; and the result deducible from the other is so plainly impossible, that an error must exist somewhere. I shall mention both however, were it for no more than to illustrate the difficulties which must be occasionally encountered.

The first of these is the Ankerwyke yew, near Staines in Buckinghamshire, traditionally regarded as above a thousand years old, and to have been connected with the amours of King Henry the VIII. It was chosen among English yews for illustration by Strutt in his "Silva Britannica," first published in 1822; and in the text he describes it as a healthy tree, 49 feet high, and with an umbrageous head 207 feet in circumference. His etching represents a clear trunk, narrowest at the ground, swelling

out at once towards its lowest main branches, which arise at eight feet above, and girthing 27 feet 8 in. at three feet, and 32 feet 5 in. at eight feet. In the winter of 1878 Mr Troy, gardener to Mr Anderson of Ankerwyke House, was so good as re-measure the tree at my request. He informs me that it looks very healthy, although there is reason to believe that it is hollow-hearted; and that the swelling below its great limbs has descended so low that its girth could no longer be taken at Strutt's upper level of eight feet, for which he therefore substituted that of seven feet. At the ground its girth was 25 feet, at three feet above 30 ft. 5 in., and at seven feet 35 feet. Thus, at three feet, the only practicable level for comparison now, there has apparently been an increase in girth of 33 inches in fiftyfour years. This amounts to the rate of an inch of radius in only 10-3 years; and were this rate to be adopted for the rate of growth of the whole trunk, the tree in 1877 was only 564 years old instead of being above a thousand years. But so great a tree cannot be nearly so young; and the erroneous result arises from the measurements having been taken over the swelling of the trunk near the spring of its limbs, which in this tree are very large.

The only other yew to be mentioned is that of Darleydale churchyard, not far from Matlock in Derbyshire. It was measured in 1837 by Mr Bowman, and found to be 27 feet in girth at the base, 27 feet 7 in. at two feet four above, 31 feet at four feet, where however there were disturbing excrescences, and 30 feet 6 in. at six feet. Last year at my request it was re-measured by Mr Smith, the eminent nurseryman of the Dale; who found the girth to be, forty-one years after Mr Bowman's measurements, 32 feet at the ground and 34 feet at four feet. Thus the girth at the ground had apparently made the extraordinary increase of 59 inches in forty-one years, which would indicate a rate of growth of an inch of radius in 44 years. This is a rate altogether extravagant; and it is singularly at variance with that indicated for the most recent period in the life of the tree by sections taken out of the exterior part of the trunk by Mr Bowman with his trephine. He cut out nine cylinders on one horizontal line, and counted on them 33, 33, 34, 35, 39, 53, 57, 62, 66 rings per inch of

radius; which numbers give an average of an inch in fortysix years. This rate agrees remarkably with that obtained by Mr Bowman in the same manner from the Gresford yew, viz., 44-5 years. I cannot explain the cause of the evident error in the result of the comparative measurements of girth after forty-one years. A partial explanation may be that the tree has a conoidal base; for Mr Smith informs me that the Darleydale yew is "a spiral or pine-like variety, 60 feet in height," and of no great spread in its head,—as is shown in small photographs, which he had the kindness to send me. Old yews of this kind have expanded bases like other trees; but that circumstance cannot alone explain so enormous a rate of growth as an inch of radius in about four years and a half.

In deducing general rules from the foregoing inquiry, I am quite aware that the facts I have been able to collect are not numerous enough to yield a perfectly trustworthy average at any period in the life of the yew, except perhaps for its early years up to 70 or 100. But nevertheless with these materials a scale may be constructed, which can scarcely be very far wrong, and which subsequent observations will test and amend. No doubt subsequent observations will bring out important varieties, which I am well aware that differences in soil, climate, exposure and other causes may create. When such deviations are considerable, it will be a matter of interest to find out and indicate what may be their several causes.

Keeping in view then all the measurements and conclusions from them in the preceding remarks, it seems probable that, under circumstances not unfavourable, a healthy yew in this country grows on an average by an inch of radius every twelve years for the first sixty or seventy years, and will attain the girth of 33 inches at the narrowest part of its trunk:-That the same rate of growth may continue to its hundredth year, or even a little later, giving a girth of 4 feet: That during the second century of life the average rate is reduced to an inch in fifteen years, giving a girth of nearly 8 feet: That during the next three centuries the rate on an average can scarcely be greater than an inch in twenty-five years, giving a girth of 14 feet at the close of the fifth century: That during the subsequent five centuries

the average rate for which we have few data, will be somewhere between thirty and forty years, say thirty-five; which will increase the girth of trunk to 22 feet at the close of one thousand years. We thus come close upon the girth of the many famous English yews of 25, 27, 28 feet in girth, which historical incidents credit with an age a few centuries above one thousand years of life. I am not aware of any existing yew of much greater magnitude than these in Britian, unless it be the yew of Fortingall, to which I will now proceed. But if there be, there is no authority from measurements that warrants a quicker rate of growth after a thousand years than an inch of radius in forty years. Any evidence to be got from the Fortingall yew itself tends only to confirm that proposition.

I was originally led to take interest in the present inquiry by the history with which has been credited in recent years the yew of Fortingall in Glenlyon. De Candolle, with the particulars at his command in 1831, estimates its age at 2500 or 2600 years in 1770; and alluding to it and a few other yews in England,-among which however he mentioned only one vying with it in antiquity,—he adds, "I venture to indicate these trees to botanists and foresters, that they may authenticate them, and establish, if possible, their law of increment; for it is probable that they are the veterans of European vegetation" [" Bibl. Univ." ii. 66]. It is surprising that such an appeal by the great botanist has not been answered long ago. The Fortingall yew survives, -alone of the two mentioned by De Candolle,—and sadly dilapidated.*

The earliest account of this tree was given about the same time, and independently of one another, by Pennant the traveller and the Honourable Daines Barrington, a barrister, afterwards on the English Bench. Pennant saw it in his first tour in Scotland in the year 1769, published in 1771. His description is brief and confined to the trunk. In the text he says no more than that in the churchyard of Aug. 1879. The other mentioned by De Candolle is the Brabourne yew, in Kent, described by Evelyn in his Silva in 1665 as a ruin with a trunk of sixty feet in girth. I am indebted to the Rev. G. B. Percy, vicar of Brabourne, for the information that now there is left of it unfortunately nothing but the tradition from Evelyn.

Fortingall near the foot of Glenlyon "there is the remains of a prodigious yew fifty-six feet and a-half in circumference" [p. 35]. But referring to a little wood-cut at p. 1, we find there the information that "the middle part is now decayed to the ground, but within memory was united to the height of three feet, Captain Campbell of Glenlyon having assured me, that, when a boy, he had often climbed over, or rode over, the connecting part." This statement is made more precise by the wood-cut of which a copy is now produced to the Society.

In his larger work published in 1790 in three quartos, in which he gives an account of his second tour in 1772, Pennant merely repeats the words now quoted from his earlier duodecimo [ii. 25.]

Barrington, in a letter published in the Royal Society Transactions for 1769, says "I measured the circumference of this yew twice, and therefore cannot be mistaken when I inform you that it amounted to fifty-two feet. Nothing scarcely now remains but the outward bark, which hath been separated by the centre of the tree's decaying within these twenty years. What still appears however is 34 feet in circumference" ["Phil. Trans." 1769, January 2, p. 37].

Compilers, probably referring to the date of publication of Pennant's large work in 1790, infer that the tree must have added 4 feet to its girth between the visits of Barrington and Pennant, assumed to have been in 1768 and 1790 respectively. But the visit of the latter was in 1769, and that of the former probably only a year earlier. Barrington's description is loose and contradictory; but his measurement may be held exact, as he took it twice.

Strutt in his "Silva Britannica" has also supplied information, but still far from being complete. One of the fine etchings in his well-known folio represents the Fortingall yew with a far greater amount of foliage and branches. than the rude wood-cut of Pennant; so that the branches of the two divisions of the tree intertwine, and form one grand leafy head, resting on two hollow shells of trunk which face one another. Nevertheless the gap in the trunk is represented greatly larger than by Pennant, and with a funeral in the act of passing through it. Strutt says that this was the practice when funerals entered the churchyard.