Taxus.] CONIFERS. 271 
to be 9 feet 3 inches in girth at two feet from the ground, 
and 9 feet 1 inch at five feet, so it appears to have increased 
about a foot in diameter during the last 125 years. Accord- 
ing to the local custodian the tree was most probably 
planted in the Abbey about the year 1344, the date of its 
completion, but there appears to be some diversity of 
opinion as to the correctness of this date. While the 
Muckross Abbey Yew is the most famous and probably the 
most symmetrical, it is not the largest growing about these 
lakes. A tree near the Abbey, measured in 1904, was 9 feet 
9 inches in girth at three feet from the ground, while 
another, on Innisfallen Island, was 13 feet in girth near the 
ground where it divided into two large branches, one 9 feet 
2 inches, the other 4 feet 3 inches in girth; a somewhat 
similar tree on the same island was 10 feet 11 inches in girth, 
dividing into two branches of 8 and 4 feet respectively. 
Several other Yews measured in 1903-04, some of them 
well grown straight trees, varied in girth from 7 feet 
to 10 feet 6 inches. 
[Pmnus syLvestris Linn. Scotch Fir. There can be no 
doubt that this tree was formerly abundant as a native in 
Kerry as elsewhere in Ireland, many of the bogs being 
still full of its roots and stumps. When, or how, these Pine 
forests were destroyed is not very clear. Some of the 
stumps show the marks of fire, but a conflagration however 
great, could hardly account for the wholesale destruction 
which must have taken place. This extermination is thought 
by some writers to have occurred during the Glacial Epoch,* 
but as the peat in which these pine stumps are now found 
is a post glacial formation, it is evident that the Scotch Fir 
was abundant in Ireland at a date subsequent to this period. 
If the early botanical writers can be relied on, this Fir 
appears to have been growing in Kerry as a native in 
comparatively modern times. Thus in Ray’s Synopsis, 
Ed. 2nd, 1696, the Scotch Fir is stated to have been ‘‘ found 
by Mr. Harrison . . . in the county of Kerry (where the 
Arbutus grows) by a person of good integrity and skill in 
the knowledge of plants.” While Dr. Smith, writing in 1756, 
says that both the ‘‘ Common Firr-tree ” and the ‘‘ Scotch 
Firr ’’ were formerly wild in the county but that “ these 
trees have been much destroyed of late years, for except a 
small shrub here and there among the rocks, there are none 
standing at present of any large size” (Hist. of Kerry, 
* Vide Clement Reid’s Origin of the British Flora 1899, Chap. 1V., cc, 
