1 8 84- S 5-] Edinburgh Naturalists' Field Club. 221 



penetrated into the recesses of the Highlands, and visited Grlenlyon 

 in order to inspect the ancient Yew of Fortingall. This gentleman 

 reported in the 'Eoyal Society Transactions' in 1769 that he had 

 "measm-ed the circumference of this Yew twice," and found it to 

 be 52 feet. Next year Barrington was followed by the well-known 

 Welsh naturalist and antiquarian, Thomas Pennant, who then made 

 his " first tour in Scotland " ; and it may be remembered — as noticed 

 b}^ our President in his inaugural address this session — that it was 

 to these two gentlemen the Rev. Gilbert White inscribed the letters 

 which form the ' Natural History of Selborne.' Pennant merely 

 notices the fact of the existence of the tree, states its circumfer- 

 ence to be 56 1 feet, and gives a small drawing of it. After the 

 notice of this drawing at the beginning of his book, he adds : " The 

 middle part is now decayed to the ground, but within memory was 

 united to the height of three feet,— Captain Campbell of Glen Lyon 

 having assured me that when a boy he has often climbed over, or 

 rode on, the then connecting part." Three years later (in 1772) 

 Pennant again visited Scotland, accompanied by Dr Lightfoot, who 

 founded his ' Flora Scotica ' on the material furnished by this tour. 

 Though in the account of this second journey he supplies some 

 gossip about Yew-trees in general, nothing is added by Pennant to 

 his former account of the Yew at Fortingall, which he again in- 

 spected. In 1785 the wall was built round it by the father of 

 Dr Irvine of Pitlochry ; and the worthy Doctor informed Professor 

 Christison tliat his mother had often told him that when she was 

 a girl — viz., about 1785 — she "could with diflSculty squeeze 

 through the gajD." The volume concerning Perthshire in the old 

 * Statistical Account of Scotland,' which appeared in 1792, only 

 furnishes us with the information that the Fortingall Yew is " a 

 very remarkable tree " ! We are thus brought down to 1822, when 

 Strutt published a splendid figure of the tree in a Supplement to 

 his ' Silva Britannica,' but with the gap so large that a funeral is 

 in the act of passing through it — a clergyman walking in front 

 reading the burial service, and a straggling company following 

 behind the bier. It is added that this mode of entrance into the 

 churchyard for funerals, by passing through the gap, was the 

 usual practice, and this has been followed by Loudon, who repeats 

 the story. Yet, as we have just seen, an eight-feet wall was built 

 round the tree thirty-seven years before, when the gap was ex- 

 tremely small ; and it may safely be concluded that funeral pro- 

 cessions never took such a route. In 1833 the late Mr Patrick 

 Neill visited Glenlyon, and wrote a minute account of the tree for 

 the ' Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal.' He mentions that 

 " large arms had been removed, and even masses of the trunk 

 carried off, to make drinking-cups and other curiosities." It is 

 added, however, that " happi]y further depredations have been pre- 



VOL. I. Q 



