6 4 



FLORA AND SYLVA, 



landscape. Their selection of subjects 

 alone is of value, for there are limita- 

 tions in landscape painting as in all arts, 

 and many beautiful things cannot be 

 done at all. From our point of view, 

 then, the art of the landscape painter is 

 the most important of all, as also the 

 most difficult to acquire, as is shown 

 by the rarety of good work. We pro- 

 pose, therefore, to give from time to 

 time engravings of some of the greatest 

 landscape painters of our own or other 

 lands, beginning in this issue by one of 

 Constable's. 



THE YEW IN HAMPSHIRE. 



In Hampshire specimens of Yews are to be 

 found in almost every description of soil and 

 situation, from the rugged veteran on the wind- 

 swept chalk downs, the last survivor of many 

 a hard-fought field, still refusing to surrender 

 to time or the storms that sweep around his 

 weird and ghost-like frame, down to the child 

 of ease and prosperity, nourished and sheltered 

 in the valley below. The county must have 

 supplied a large proportion of the bows used for 

 war as well as sporting purposes in the olden 

 time. On some of the chalk hangings at the 

 present day the young seedlings can be num- 

 bered by thousands, but whether the tree ever 

 formed woods of any extent I do not know. 

 A peculiarity in the growth of the Yew is that 

 when young it grows with the rapidity of a 

 Larch, and then suddenly stops at between 

 twenty and thirty years of age and assumes the 

 bushy and spreading form characteristic of the 

 tree. It seldom exceeds 60 feet in height. 



A churchyard is hardly complete without 

 its Yews, many of which are of a great age and 

 size, and the age of the trees is a fertile source 

 of guessing and calculation with many writers. 

 De Candolle gives the age at 1,214, l A5%> 

 2,588, and 2,880 years, so that there is ample 

 room for guesswork. In the churchyard of 

 Selborne is the finest specimen in the county, 

 some say in England, but this it would be hard 

 to decide. It stands on the south side of the 

 church, and the best view of it is obtained 

 from the south-east. 



Gilbert White, in his " Natural History 

 of Selborne," does not mention this tree. This 

 is unaccountable, as he has taken notice of 

 almost every notable thing in his native place 

 in his interesting letters. There is a tradition 

 that he gave the age of it at 2,000 years. 

 Measured in 1881 it had the large circum- 

 ference of 25 feet 2 inches, a sheer estimated 

 height of 55 feet, and spreads its branches from 

 north tosouth 22 yards. It is in vigorous health, 

 the leaves having that deep dark colour of a 

 thriving tree, and is without a flaw in its 

 symmetry. The subsoil is the green sand, bor- 

 dering on the chalk. The ancient but small 

 church of Lockerley, situate about 1 J> miles to 

 the west of Dunbridge Railway Station on the 

 Bishopstoke and Salisbury line, is mentioned 

 in Domesday Survey as being one of the 

 chapelries attached to the mother-church of 

 Mottisfont, of which it is still a curacy. 



To the south of the ancient fabric and in 

 the churchyard stands a Yew with a girth of 

 23 feet 4 inches, only 1 foot 10 inches less than 

 the one at Selborne, but it does not look so 

 healthy, and has a height of only 32 feet. It 



J was measured in 1879. The next one to be 

 noticed is in a nut orchard at the village of 

 Hurstbourne Priors, near Whitchurch. The 

 girth in 1 879 was 23 feet 1 o inches, or 6 inches 

 more than the Lockerley one, but it is a very 

 rugged specimen, and is only remarkable for its 

 large girth ; soil, clay on the chalk. In Little 

 Somborne Park there are a number of very old 

 ones, many of them quite hollow, riven and 

 torn with the wear of centuries, and although 



1 not so large as those mentioned I should say 

 they were older — no doubt the survivors of the 

 time when, in the adjoining parish of King's 

 Somborne, John of Gaunt had a park and a 

 palace, and where there are the remains of butts 

 where the retainers of the Duke may have 

 practised archery, he being a patron of the art, 



] as Shakespeare has it in "Henry IV.," when 

 Justice Shallow says, on being informed of the 

 death of "Old Double," " Dead! he was an 



I excellent shot ! John of Gaunt loved him, and 

 betted money on his head; and dead." The 

 largest is at the back of the kitchen garden ; 

 it is quite hollow, and has a girth of 21 feet 

 4^ inches. Soil, clayey loam upon a subsoil of 

 chalk. 



R. S.J. 



