ON THE OLD AND REMARKABLE YEW TREES IN SCOTLAND. 391 



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 those in Britain, unless it be the yew 

 of Fortingal ; but if there be, there is no authority from measure- 

 ments that warrant a quicker rate of growth after a thousand 

 years than an inch of radius in forty years. Any evidence to 

 be got from the Fortingal yew itself tends only to confirm that 

 proposition." 



De Candolle, with particulars of the tree in his possession in 

 1831, and by the method of measuring and computing its growth 

 to which we have so fully referred, estimates its age to have been 

 2-500 to 2G00 years in 1770; and alluding to it and some others in 

 England — among which, however, he only mentions the Brabourne 

 yew ^ in Kent as 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 incre- 

 ment ; for it is probable that they are the veterans of European 

 vegetation " (" Bibl. Univ.," ii., 6G). 



The earliest notice of this remarkable relic of many generations 

 is by Pennant, the famed traveller, and also by the Honourable 

 Daines Barrington, a barrister, afterwards a Judge on the English 

 Bench, who seem to have stumbled upon it about the same year 

 (17G9). Pennant's " Tour," published in 1771, states that in the 

 churchyard of Fortingal " there is the remains of a prodigious 

 yew, 56i- feet in circumference," — " the middle part is now decayed 

 to the ground, but within memory was united to the height of 3 

 feet ; Captain Campbell of Glenlyon having assured me, that 

 when a boy he had often climbed over, or rode over, the connect- 

 ing part." 



Barrington, in The Roijal 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 circum- 

 ference." 



Strutt, in " Silva Britannica," also mentions the tree, and gives 

 a beautiful etching in his folio volume, which, however, represents 



^ Evelyu, iu his "Silva" in 1G55, describes the Brahounio yew as "a ruiii 

 with a trunk of 60 feet in girth." Now (1888), there is nothing left of it 

 vuifui'tunately, but the tradition from Evelyn. — Rev. G. B. l^raicY. 



VOL. XII., PART III. 2 D 



