peculiar magnesian limestone formation, which decomposes into a red loamy soil, on which yews grow very freely, though they do not attain anything like the size that they do in the south of England. The largest which I measured was only 8 feet in girth. What makes them so picturesque is the way in which their roots spread over the bare rocks, and the mixture of curiously gnarled wych elms which accompany them. All the foot-bridges are here made of yew wood, but it is not cut except for home use, and is not increasing by seed—again, I think, on account of the rabbits.
There is a remarkably fine yew walk at Hatherop Castle, Gloucestershire, the seat of G. Bazley, Esq., which is supposed to be about 300 years old, in which the trees average about 60 feet in height with a girth of 9 to 12 feet.
The yew in Harlington Churchyard, near Hounslow, Middlesex, was considered by Kirchner (loc. cit. 60) to be the tallest yew tree in Europe, viz., 17.4 metres (57 feet). Lowe, page 85, gives the height in 1895 as 80 feet, on the authority of the Rev. E.J. Haddon. Henry saw this yew in October 1895, and measured the height as 50 feet only, and this is correct, within a margin of error of less than 2 feet. This tree is 17 feet 3 inches in girth at the base, where the bole is narrowest; above this it swells and is very gnarled, and at 10 feet up it divides into two great limbs.
A celebrated yew stands in the churchyard at Crowhurst, in Surrey, and has been described by Lowe (p. 201) and figured by Clayton.[1]
Crowhurst, in Sussex, has another great old tree of which much has been written, and which Low figures (p. 38).
One of the finest yews in England is the Darley yew, growing in the churchyard at Darley Dale, Derbyshire. From a work on Derbyshire Churches, by the Rev. J.C. Cox, M.A., which has been sent me by Messrs. Smith, the well-known nurserymen of Darley Dale, I abridge the following particulars of it:—The churchyard is celebrated for what is claimed to be the finest existing yew tree in England, or even in the United Kingdom. Rhodes, writing of it in 1817, says that the trunk for about 4 yards from the ground measures upwards of 34 feet in girth; but Lowe gives (p. 207) measurements taken by four different persons between 1836 and 1888, of which the largest is 34 feet 6 inches by Mr. Smith in 1879, and the most recent and exact by Mr. Paget Bowman in 1888, which gives 32 feet 3 inches at 4 feet from the ground. This gentleman cut from it with a trephine nine cylinders of wood on one horizontal line which show 33 to 66 rings per inch of radius, showing an average growth of an inch in 46 years. There is a cavity in the tree about half-way up one of the trunks which will hold seven or eight men standing upright. At the ground the girth is 27 feet, and at this point no increase has taken place for 52 years. The height is not given, but a photograph by Mr. Statham shows it as about 50 feet.
I have chosen the tree at Tisbury for illustration as a specimen of the churchyard yew, for though figured by Lowe, his plate gives a poor idea of its symmetry, and it is one of the largest healthy yews in England. Though difficult to measure on account of the young spray which its trunk throws out, I made it in 1903 to be
- ↑ Trans. Bot. Soc. Edinburgh, 1903, p. 408.
