104 ESSAYS. 



its diameter. Since all trees grow the more slowly as they 

 advance in years, this method would seem to be a safe one, if 

 we were well assured that the average rate of growth has 

 been correctly assumed. But extended observation upon 

 Yews in England has shown that young trees often grow 

 much more rapidly than De Candolle supposed ; so that, from 

 the application of his rule to Yews not more than four or five 

 hundred years old, we should be liable greatly to exaggerate 

 their age. But it is also found that still older trees grow so 

 much more slowly, that the rule may be applied to very an- 

 cient Yews with reasonable probability that the estimate will 

 fall beneath the truth, and make them appear younger than 

 they really are. The greater the circumference of the tree, the 

 less the danger that its more rapid early growth will falsify 

 the estimate. The adoption of this rule leads, however, to 

 rather startling conclusions. 



The computed age of the famous Yews of Fountains' Abbey, 

 near Ripon, in Yorkshire, is to a great extent sustained by 

 the history of the abbey itself, as chronicled by Hugh, a monk 

 of Kirkstall, whose narrative — still preserved, it is said, in 

 the library of the Royal Society — forms the basis of the well 

 known account in Burton's " Monasticon." Th'is monastery, 

 the noble ruins of which are now overlooked by the venerable 

 trees that watched its erection, was founded in the year 1132, 

 by Thurstan, Archbishop of York, for certain monks, whose 

 consciences, being too tender to allow them to indulge in the 

 relaxed habits of their own order, made them desirous of 

 adopting the more rigid rule of the Cistercians, then recently 

 introduced into England. 



"At Christmas," therefore, says Burton, "the Archbishop, 

 being at Ripon, assigned to these monks some land in the 

 patrimony of St. Peter, about three miles west of that place, 

 for the erecting of a monastery. The spot of ground had 

 never been inhabited, unless by wild beasts, being overgrown 

 with woods and brambles, lying between two steep hills and 

 rocks, covered with wood on all sides, more proper for a re- 

 treat for wild beasts than for the human species. . . . Richard, 

 the Prior of St. Mary's at York, was chosen Abbot by the 



