ox THE OLD AND REMARKABLE YEW TREES IN SCOTLAND. 393 



US "that at the commencement of his incumbency in 1806, there 

 lived in the village of Kirkton of Fortingal, an old man, Donald 

 Robertson, eighty years of age, who remembered that when a boy 

 going to school, he could hardly pass through between the two 

 parts of the trunk ; now several yards separate them, and this 

 dilapidation was mainly occasioned by the boys of the village 

 kindling their fire at Baeltainn within the hollowed trunk. It is 

 from 52 to 56 feet in circumference" ("Statist. Account of Scot- 

 land," X., 545, July 1838). Sir Eobert Christison had this infor- 

 mation verified by Dr Irvine of Pitlochry, who is a grandson of 

 a former owner of the Fortingal burying-ground, Stewart of Garth. 

 His mother often told him that, when she was a girl, about the 

 year 1 785, she could with difficulty squeeze through the gap ; and 

 that her father at that time built the wall to protect the tree from 

 dilapidation. 



Sir R. Christison thus briefly sums up his explorations, measure- 

 ments, and investigations, regarding this most interesting patriarchal 

 relic of tree life : — "The substance of all [our investigations] seems 

 to be this. In the second quarter of last century it was a great 

 tree, hollow no doubt from decay, and with a gap in its trunk, 

 narrow however, and not extending to the ground. In 1769 the 

 gap had reached the ground, but was still far from wide ; and the 

 girth over all was 52 feet by one measurement, and 5G^ feet by 

 another. In 1825 the gap had become very much larger; and 

 the remains of the trunk consisted of two large portions of its 

 circumference, the hollows of which directly faced each other. 

 During the next eight years, extensive dilapidations must have 

 been inflicted on it to justify the description of Mr Neill in 1833. 

 But he was clearly wrong in recognising the existence of only one 

 ' semicircular wall ' of the old trunk ; for another large portion 

 survives to the present day." 



One of the portions of the trunk bears now a vigorous head clad 

 with healthy foliage, and 16 feet in height; and the other a fine 

 crop of branchlets and larger arms, very healthy, and upwards of 

 24 feet in height. Outside the enclosing wall is a vigorous young 

 yew, which may be either a seedling of the old veteran, or the product 

 of some surface root from the old trunk. It is a handsome thriving 

 tree, with a cylindrical trunk, somewhat grooved, 53 inches in girth 

 at five feet from the ground, branching at eight feet, and bearing a 

 fine leafy head, pine-like in habit, and 35 feet in height. Whether it 

 be a scion of the wonderful original parent tree, or only a seedling 



