I02 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



specimen of bog-yew, drew attention in 1903 to the occurrence of yew in Ballyfin 

 bog in Queen's County. It was so plentiful there in former times that the 

 farmers in the neighbourhood used it for gate - posts and in roofing houses. 

 Mr. J. Adams has published a short account* of Mr. Cole's discovery, from 

 which it appears that the cross-section of one trunk, 2 feet in diameter, showed 

 no less than 395 annual rings. Another specimen showed 123 rings, only occupy- 

 ing a width of i^ inches. Mr. Cole informs me that in no case where the 

 root was vertical did he find more than 18 inches deep of peat beneath ; in other 

 parts of the bog where the yews were found more deeply buried, their roots were 

 twisted and out of their natural position, and were probably carried there by floods. 

 Apparently then, the yew, unlike the common pine, never grew in any great depth 

 of peat. 



Large trunks of yew were formerly dug up on the shore of Magilligan in 

 Co. Derry, between the rocks and the sea.** On the east side of Glenveigh, in 

 Co. Donegal, thick logs are reported to be often found in the peat.' 



In the Kew Museum there is a specimen of fossil yew, which was dug up in 

 Hatfield Chase, near Thorne, Yorkshire, from under a bed of clay 6 feet in 

 thickness ; and another specimen is labelled, " Submarine Forest, Stogursey, 

 Somersetshire." 



Professor Seeley, F.R.S., in a very interesting letter, dated January 1904, says 

 that he has seen " the broken stumps of yew trees standing as they grew by scores, 

 possibly by hundreds, in Mildenhall Fen, about 1865, when the peat was entirely 

 removed so as to prepare the land for corn. One tree sketched by Mr. Marshall, 

 at that time Coroner for the Isle of Ely, from a section between Ely and Downham 

 Market, showed the yew growing in sandy gravel with black flints. The roots were 

 entirely in the gravel. Above the gravel is the ' Buttery Clay,' 2 feet 6 inches thick, 

 into which the trunk of the tree extended vertically, rising about i foot into the 

 Upper Peat, which was 4 feet 6 inches thick. This clay is marine, and is the delta 

 mud of the Cam and the Ouse deposited on the Lower Peat and beyond it, where 

 a depression of land admitted the sea over the Isle of Ely and killed the forests. 

 A little part of the Scrobicularia Clay is 6 feet thick, and the peat above it 18 feet 

 thick. The common trees in the peat there are pines and oaks. I have never seen 

 the beech, and never heard of the lime. About the pine there is no doubt. It 

 occurred in the forests of the Forest Bed of Norfolk, and at several localities in the 

 peat of the fens, almost always on clay covered by peat." 



In the present day the common yew is met with growing wild in most parts of 

 Europe, from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, and from the Atlantic to the 

 western provinces of Russia. It has only recently become extinct in the Azores. 

 It also occurs in Algeria, Asia Minor, the Caucasus, North Persia, the Himalayas, 

 and Burma. The yew also extends into the mountains of Sumatra, South Celebes, 

 and the Philippines.^ 



' Irish Naturalist, xiv. 1905, p. 34, with plate showing yew trunk and transverse section. 



"^ Mackay, Flora Hiberttica, 260 (1836). 



3 Hart, Flora County Donegal, 237 (1898). 



* Specimens from these localities have been identified by Pilger as the Himalayan yew. 



