482 NOTES FROM LOUGH ERNE. 



" the phenomena had not happened to any remarkable degree in his part 

 of England since he was born/' later writers mistake in describing this 

 bs its <c first appearance" at that period, since it had certainly ap- 

 peared in 1706 and 1708 in England, not to mention its appearance in 

 Ireland in the intervening year. 



I trouble you with these observations in consequence of having 

 recently procured access to the Philosophical Transactions, to which I 

 could not refer at the date of my former letter. With reference to the 

 noise which is said to be at times an accompaniment to this meteor I 

 would add, that in " Observations on the Lumen Boreale, or Streaming, 

 on October 8, 1726," communicated to the Royal Society by the Rev. 

 W. Derham, and inserted in the Philosophical Transactions for 1727, 

 No. 398, it is noticed, that " several persons who viewed this appear- 

 ance, heard a hissing, and in some places a crackling noise, in the time 

 of streaming." 



Killeshandra, Ireland, Sept. 2Jlh, 1833. 



NOTES FROM LOUGH ERNE, 



BV RU RTCOLA. 



Having availed myself of a very obliging invitation to take ad- 

 vantage of being in the neighbourhood, for visiting the magnificent 

 mansion of Crum or Crom Castle, now building on the estate of the 

 Earl of Erne, on the upper lake of Lough Erne, in the county of 

 Fermanagh, I beg leave to notice two or three things which took my 

 attention as fit matters for communication to the Field Naturalist's 

 Magazine. 



Of these, the most remarkable is a Yew Tree, of great age and 

 proportionate expansion, situated in a curious, old-fashioned, terraced 

 garden, adjoining the fine ivy-mantled ruin of the old castle, which was 

 burnt down fifty or sixty years ago. The stem of the tree is upright 

 and undivided, being by measurement eight feet and a half in circum- 

 ference, at about three from the ground. The highest point, as near as 

 we could compute, is eighteen feet. Six feet from the ground, the 

 boughs project horizontally round the stem so as to cover a space nearly 

 circular ; the diameter of which is about twenty-seven yards, or eighty- 

 one feet ; and the circumference, of course, about eighty-four yards, or 

 254 feet. No particular date can be assigned to this tree : but local 

 tradition, as well as internal evidence, attributes to it a far-off origin. 



