880 TAXACEiE. 



of Bernera, adjacent to the Sound of Mull, and which 

 was cut down by the late Sir Duncan Campbell. " Its 

 precise dimensions," he adds, " were not preserved, but 

 the timber of it deeply loaded a Highland six-oared boat, 

 and was sufficient to form a large elegant staircase in 

 the house of Lochnell, which was afterwards burnt. - " 



At Loudon Castle in Ayrshire is a famous Yew, forty- 

 two feet high and upwards of fourteen feet in circum- 

 ference at twelve feet from the ground. Under this tree 

 the Bruce is said to have bestowed the ancient castle 

 and estate on the Loudon family. The Dry burgh Yew, 

 supposed to have been planted at the time the abbey was 

 founded in 1136, is still a fine flourishing tree, and its 

 branches cover a space whose diameter is fifty feet. The 

 girth of its trunk is twelve feet. It is a female, and pro- 

 duces abundance of berries, from which we have raised 

 several plants. Sir T. D. Lauder mentions the Ormiston 

 Yew, growing in the garden at Ormiston Hall, a seat 

 of the Earl of Haddington, in Haddingtonshire, as one 

 of the most beautiful Yew trees in Scotland. Its head 

 covers an area of fifty-eight feet in diameter, and its 

 greatest girth at five feet above the ground is nearly 

 eighteen feet. In Ireland, the Mucruss Abbey Yew is 

 supposed to be coeval with the building, which existed, 

 and was celebrated as a sanctuary in 1180. Hayes, 

 also, in 1794, records several Yew trees of considerable 

 dimensions and great age, as existing at that time in 

 Ireland. 



Besides the Yews already mentioned, there are many 

 others, in various parts of the kingdom, scarcely their 

 inferiors, either in point of antiquity or dimensions, but 

 which the limits of our work oblige us to omit ; there 

 are, also, numerous examples, of a younger age, in a 



