* 



68 Yew- Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



thickening of the stem. 1 The causes which produce 

 injury of the lead or main stem differ in kind and 

 degree according to the age of the tree. Thus in 

 the young state it may have been eaten off by 

 animals ; at a later period it may have been cut 

 by man for the manufacture of bows, as Keats 

 makes Endymion say 



The fair-grown yew-tree, for a chosen bow.' 



At a still later period it may have been riven by 

 lightning or broken by a wind-storm such as that 

 which did so much damage to the famous Borrodale 

 yews in December i883. 2 More destructive still 

 are heavy falls of snow, which not only split off 

 large boughs, but in some instances demolish an 

 entire group of trees. In the winter of 1886 more 

 than seven magnificent trees were thus destroyed in 



1 Mr. Fernow gives the following description, which may serve as a type of 

 what occurs in a conifer after fracture : ' Let a tree grow up under favourable 

 conditions for a hundred years, as the Douglas spruce in question seems to 

 have done, when its ring-growth will be wide, its crown reaching above its 

 neighbours. A hurricane breaks off a large part of its crown, when necessarily 

 and suddenly, at least within a year, the rings become narrow in proportion. 

 Within the next thirty years the crown recuperates, which, in a resinous 

 conifer like the Douglas spruce, is possible without fear of fungus attacks 

 and decay ; but the food-material descending from the foliage will for a long 

 time be only sufficient, on the particular section in question at the base of the 

 tree, to make a narrow annual ring, even after the crown is fully recuperated. 

 Were a section cut higher up in the tree, it would be found that the rings 

 there have begun to widen sooner than at the lower section. Finally, and 

 rather suddenly for any given section, the supply has become normal, and 

 especially if an exceedingly favourable season, occurs at the same time the 

 rings show again normal width.' B. E. Fernow, Nature, May 28, 1896. 



2 Described by the Rev. H. Drummond Rawnsley in the Wordsworth 

 Society's Transactions. 



