Notes Fortingal, Fotheringay 2 1 1 



yew itself.' ' On many parts of the shell and the 

 branch, the rates varied from one inch in 48 to 

 one in 60, 68, 70, and 90 years.' ' None of 

 these rates could be reasonably taken as denoting 

 the growth of the trunk for much more than its 

 last hundred years of life.' * It is better,' he says, 

 ' to use the general rules arrived at, according 

 to which the tree in the first place is assumed to. 

 have attained a girth of 22 feet in a thousand years.' 

 ' After that age no information yet got warrants a 

 rate of more than one inch (circumference) in thirty- 

 five years. Take then the lowest measurement 

 (Barrington's) at 52 feet, the difference will thus 

 add 2000 years to the age of the Fortingal yew, 

 making it in all 3000 years.' 



It is next to impossible to regard this tree as 

 other than a compound one, formed either by the 

 formation of rings of young growth or the co- 

 alescence of distinct stems arising from the base, 

 as in the trees now growing at Tintern and at 

 Norbury Park, and elsewhere, or from the union 

 of several distinct trunks, as in the island of 

 Lonaig, Loch Lomond. I revisited this tree in 

 1887, and found that the circle of wood had 

 considerably diminished since my first visit thirty- 

 six years before. 



Fotheringay. - - There never was a yew - tree 

 within recent times at Fotheringay. The Rev. 

 R. Croydon-Bennet tells me that, after minute 



