IN HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS 13 



which evidently flourishes in the chalk, as does 

 the graceful ash. Most old Hampshire churches 

 have their fine yew or two. St. Mary Bourne has 

 one with a girth of twenty-one feet, or some six feet 

 less than the vast tree in the churchyard of Gilbert 

 White's Selborne, which I measured some years ago 

 and found to be nearly twenty-seven feet in girth. 

 In some spots, notably about the Roman or British 

 remains close to Bransbury and by Bullington in 

 the same district, yews grow in some numbers in 

 the hedgerows, and here and there at random 

 like oak and ash. Nor are the quaintly-cut yews 

 of the cottage garden wanting in various villages 

 and hamlets hereabouts. Tennyson knew his 

 Hampshire yews, and has described the tree in 

 the second canto of In Memoriam 



* Old Yew which graspest at the stones 

 That name the under-lying dead, 

 Thy fibres net the dreamless head, 

 Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.' 



At Combe village one may well leave the road 

 and follow a track leading to the top of the 

 towering masses which divide the counties of 

 Hampshire and Berkshire. From the breezy top 

 at Combe Gibbet the grim mark of a rough- 



