270 



Queries and Ayis'wers. 



Art. IV. Queries and Anstvers. 



A REMARKABLE Yeiv Tree. {fig. 28.)— Mr. Gibson, bookseller in Oxford, 

 found, the other day, 

 among some old books 

 which he had recently- 

 purchased, and which 

 were formerly the pro- 

 perty of (the Rev.) Mr. 

 Henry Bright, who, I 

 think, was author of a 

 small work on the virtues 

 of British plants, an old 

 copperplate print of a 

 very large and curious 

 yew tree {fig. 28.), said 

 to have been growing, 

 about 1729, in the village 

 of Arlington, Middlesex. 

 This print is headed, 

 "Poet John Saxy upon 

 his Yew Tree, Nov. 1 729 ;" 

 and it is accompanied by 

 a copy of verses, from 

 which it appears that it 

 must have been as much 

 as 50ft. or 60 ft. in height. 

 It was surrounded at the 

 bottom of its trunk by a 

 wooden seat ,above which, 

 at 10 ft. from the ground, was a large circular canopy, formed by the tree 

 itself, which was, according to Poet Saxy, — 



" So thick, so fine, so full, so wide, 

 A troop of guards might under it ride." 

 Ten feet above this canopy was another, of much smaller dimensions ; and above 

 that a pyramid, about 20 ft. high, surmounted by a globe 10 ft. in diameter; and 

 this globe was crowned by — 



" A weathercock, who gaped to crow it 

 This world is mine, and all below it." 



In the rhymes, this tree, it is said, — 



" Yields to Arlington a fame 

 Much louder than its Earldom's name ; " 



from which it may be inferred, that it grew in some churchyard in the parish 

 of Arlington, though the paper is indorsed, " The Yew Tree at Harlington, 

 Middlesex." 



I find no notice of such a tree as this ever having been growing at Arlington, 

 either in Brewer's Z)e5cr2p/io?i of London mid Middlesex (1816), Middleton's 

 Agricultural Survey of Middlesex {\^01^, Miller's Gardener'' s Dictionary, T^ye- 

 lyn's Sylva, or any other work in my library. As you are living not far from 

 the place, perhaps you may know more about it, and whether the tree is still 

 growing there. — W. Baxter. Bot. Gard. Oxford, Dec. 16. 1835. 



We have been unable to procure any information respecting this tree ; and 

 should be much obliged to any of our readers who have it in their power, to 

 send us an account of its present state. — Cond. 



Loudo7i's [Robert of Carstairs] Seedling Grape is mentioned (Vol. X. p. 397.) 

 as an excellent grape, which " readily produces a second ci'op, especially when 

 grown in a pine-stove." A correspondent in the same volume, p. 577., asks 



