COMMON YEW. 



377 



fifty-eight feet high, with a trunk nine feet, and a head 

 fifty feet in diameter. In the churchyard of Darby in 

 the Dale, Derbyshire, stands the Darby Yew, the cir- 

 cumference of whose trunk, at four feet from the ground, 

 is thirty-one feet eight inches. At seven feet above the 

 ground it forks into two nearly upright boughs, which 

 rise to the height of fifty-five feet. This tree is a 

 female. Wales also contains Yews of very ancient date 

 and huge dimensions ; amongst them, the Gresford Yew 

 stands preeminent for its beauty of form and magnificent 

 appearance ; it grows in the south-east corner of Gresford 

 churchyard, near Wrexham, Denbighshire, and has a cir- 

 cumference a little below the divarication of the branches 

 of twenty-nine feet, and, at the very base, of twenty-two 

 feet. Its height is fifty-two feet, and the circumference 

 of its head would appear to be upwards of one hundred 

 and sixty feet. The Mamhilad Yew, a female tree in 

 the churchyard of that name, a few miles north of Ponty- 

 pool, shows, from the hollowness of its trunk, and the 

 growth of a large tree, apparently detached within the 

 central cavity, an extraordinary antiquity, as does like- 

 wise the Llanthewy Vach Yew, which, like the former, 

 has a hollow trunk with a lateral opening, and capable 

 of containing five or six persons. It has also, in the 

 centre, a still more remarkable inner trunk covered with 

 bark, and this is detached and distinct from the old trunk 

 below, though united to it above by a branch running 

 into, or more probably proceeding from it. This singular 

 formation of interior trunks within the hollows of more 

 ancient trees, seems satisfactorily accounted for in an 

 article published in the first volume of the new series of 

 the " Magazine of Natural History, 1 ' 1 where the author ob- 

 serves, " that when the top of the trunk becomes injured 



