Calculating Age by an adjacent building 59 



is due to a suggestion of De Candolle. It would 

 be hardly worth while to notice this method were 

 it not so frequently practised by men of intelli- 

 gence. To show the absurd deductions to which 

 it may lead, there are in Kent two contiguous 

 parishes, the churchyards of which have each a 

 large yew, the one 16 feet and the other 17 feet 

 in girth. The churches are eleventh and fourteenth 

 century, so that there would in this way be three 

 centuries of difference. 



A similar fallacy is evident in the case of 

 Arbuthnot, 1 where a tree in the manse garden, 

 with a girth of 8 feet n inches, is thought by 

 Mr. Hutchison to date from 1242, in which year 

 the Church of St. Ternan, near which it stands, 

 was consecrated by Bishop de Bernham. Thus we 

 should have an increase of diameter of only 35 

 inches in 648 years, or very nearly i foot in 216 

 years, a rate of growth opposed to all proved data. 

 The Boughton tree attained a greater size than 

 this in two hundred years. We should not forget 

 to note that nearly all estimates of age ignore the 

 relative sizes of the trees, so that we find two trees of 

 the same dimensions may differ five or six hundred 

 years in estimated age, which is a palpable absurdity. 



At Arngomery, Stirlingshire, 2 there is a tree 



1 Trans. Royal Arb. Soc. t 1890. 



2 ' Old and Remarkable Yew-trees in Scotland,' Trans. Royal Scot. Arb. 

 oc.j 1893. 



