4 1 S The Journal of Forestry. 



He adds that the great dramatist's opiuiun of its noxious pruperties is 

 evident from Hecate's answer to the aerial spirit, — 



" AVith uew-faDeu dew, 

 From churchyard yew, 

 I will tut 'noint, 

 And then I'll mount." 



The branches of the cypress and the yew were, in ancient Greece and 

 liome, the usual signals to denote a house of mourning, and hence some 

 have contended that this custom took its rise from pagan superstition, 

 and that it is as old as the conquest of Britain by Julius Cresar. In Sir 

 John Sinclair's statistical account of Scotland, parish of Tortingal, in 

 Perthshire, it is stated, "Among our curiosities may be reckoned a yew 

 tree in the churchyard of Fortingal, 52 ft. round." In Dunscore there 

 once stood in the churchyard a large yew tree, much decayed. Three 

 men could stand in it. In Lord Hopetoun's garden, at Armiston, 

 stood a yew which covered about the twentieth part of an English 

 acre. Two yew trees at Ballikinrain are mentioned by the same author 

 as covering an area of eighteen yards in diameter ; and one in the 

 parish of Kippen covering by its lower branches a circle of 140 feet 

 in circumference. In Poole's " English Parnassus " the yew lias the 

 epithets of " v/arlick, dismal, fatal, mortal, venomous, unhappy, verdant, 

 deadly, dreadful," annexed to it, Chaucer calls it the " shooter ewe." 

 In Herrick's " Hesperides " we read, — 



"An' look, what smallage, nightshade, cypress, yew, 

 Unto the shades have been, or now are due, 

 Here I devut'e." 



But the yew is so frequently mentioned by poets that it is impossible 

 to give more quotations. Loudon enumerates the following yew trees 

 in England. Those of Fountains Abbey, seven in number, sheltered 

 the founder of the abbey and his monks. A portrait of one of these 

 celebrated trees is given by Strutt, and described as being 50 feet in 

 height, and supposing it to have existed, and been a large tree pre- 

 viously to 1132, it must be upwards (in 1837) of 800 years old. 



The Tytherley yews are above 500 years old; the largest 28 feet 

 high, diameter of the trunk 3 feet 6 inches, and the head 50 feet. 

 There is mentioned as being in the same wood an avenue of 162 yew 

 trees, supposed to be about 200 years old; and another avenue of 

 120 trees, averaging about 28 feet high, and about 160 years old. 

 The Tisbury yew, 37 feet in circumference, and entered by a rustic 

 gate ; the interior of this tree once accommodated seventeen persons, 

 who breakfasted there. The Ifley yew supposed to have been })lanted 

 before the Norman conquest, with a girth of 20 feet at two feet from 

 the ground. The Anker wyke yew, near Staines, supposed to be up- 



