346 THE YEW. 



superstitious feeling or for the sake of supplying the de- 

 mand for bow- staves. 



The Yew is a native of most of the temperate parts of 

 Europe and Asia, growing in its wild state in situations 

 little exposed to the direct rays of the sun, such as the 

 north side of steep hills, or among tall trees, and, according 

 to London, always in a clayey, loamy, or calcareous soil, 

 which is naturally moist. The same author also states 

 that the Yew is rather a solitary than a social tree, being 

 generally found either alone or with trees of a different 

 species. This is, however, far from being always the 

 case, for the Yew-tree Island in Loch Lomond, some 

 twenty years ago, furnished three hundred Yews for the 

 axe ; and there are still a number of fine specimens on it : 

 it is also abundant on the north side of the mountains in 

 the same neighbourhood. There are also a great number 

 of these trees on the cliffs near Coomb Martin in the north 

 of Devon, growing in places which are accessible only to 

 birds. But the most remarkable assemblage of Yews in 

 Great Britain is at a place called Kingly Bottom, about 

 four miles from Chich ester. As to when or by whom they 

 were planted, or indeed whether they were planted by the 

 hand of man at all, history is silent. They are about two 

 hundred in number ; one half of them form a dense, dark 

 grove, in the depth of the Bottom ; the remainder, smaller 

 ones, are scattered over the sides of the valley, intermingled 

 with fine plants of Juniper and Holly. The trunks of 

 the largest vary from twelve to twenty feet in circumfer- 

 ence at three feet from the ground ; their greatest height 

 is about forty feet, and their extreme spread sixty feet in 

 diameter. Tradition fixes their age at nine hundred years. 



The Yew-tree is characterised by a trunk peculiarly 

 suggestive of massiveness and solidity, not being covered, 

 like the trunks of most other trees, with a splitting bark, 

 but seemingly composed of a number of smooth stems 

 fused together. The bark itself is of a reddish-brown hue, 

 and scales off in thin plates. At the height of a few feet 



