in Buckland Churchyard, near Dover. 49 



stances connected with its present state and appearance. 

 Upwards of sixty years ago (as I am informed by an old 

 inhabitant of the place), the tree was shattered by lightning, 

 which at the same time demolished also the steeple of the 

 church close to which it stands. To .this catastrophe, no 

 doubt, is to be attributed, in great measure, much of the rude 

 and grotesque appearance which it now presents. At a yard 

 from the ground, the but, which is hollow, and on one side 

 extremely tortuous and irregular, protruding its " knotted 

 fangs," like knees, at the height of some feet from the surface, 

 measures 24 ft. in circumference. It is split from the bottom 

 into two portions ; one of which, at the height of about 6 ft., 

 again divides naturally into two parts ; so that the tree con- 

 sists of a short squat but, branching out into three main arms, 

 the whole not exceeding in height, to the extreme top of the 

 branches, more than about 25 ft. or 30 ft. Of what may be 

 regarded as the original trunk and arms, but little, I conceive, 

 now remains alive: two considerable portions, however, are 

 still conspicuous in the state of dead wood ; viz., one on the 

 inner part of the northern limb, hollow, and forming a sort 

 of tunnel or chimney ; the other on the western limb, more 

 solid, and exhibiting the grain of the wood singularly gnarled 

 and contorted. These, which I have ventured to call portions 

 of the original trunk and arms, are partly encased, as it were, 

 on the outside by living wood of more recent growth (as is 

 frequently seen to be the case in other old and decayed trees) ; 

 the dead portions seeming to evince a disposition to slough out 

 (if I may use such an expression), like fragments of carious 

 bone separating from the flesh, but kept fixed in their position 

 by the living wood, lapping over, as it does, and clasping 

 them firmly. If this view of the subject be correct, it would 

 seem almost impossible to set limits to the duration of the 

 yew *, as it appears that fresh wood continues to form exter- 

 nally long after the more central parts have completely de- 

 cayed. Nor is this circumstance, I am aware, peculiar to the 



* In proof of the toughness and durability of the yew, I may here 

 mention a circumstance relating to a tree of this species in Coleshill 

 churchyard, Warwickshire. The tree consists of a mere thin hollow shell, 

 no( more than half of the whole circumference, and carries, perhaps, its due 

 proportion of top and branches. More than forty years ago, a near rela- 

 tive of mine, as I have often heard him state, once stood for half an hour 

 watching this tree during a tempestuous gale of wind, in order to witness 

 its fall, expecting every moment that it must inevitably be blown down, it 

 bent, and wreathed, and twisted so, under the influence of the boisterous 

 elements. My friend has been dead some years; the yew remains to this 

 day precisely in the same condition in which it existed when I first knew 

 it in my chiidhood. 



Vol. YL — No. 31. e 



