specimen of bog-yew, drew attention in 1903 to the occurrence of yew in Ballyfin bog in Queen's County. It was so plentiful there in former times that the farmers in the neighbourhood used it for gate-posts and in roofing houses. Mr. J. Adams has published a short account[1] of Mr. Cole's discovery, from which it appears that the cross-section of one trunk, 2 feet in diameter, showed no less than 395 annual rings. Another specimen showed 123 rings, only occupying a width of 1½ inches. Mr. Cole informs me that in no case where the root was vertical did he find more than 18 inches deep of peat beneath; in other parts of the bog where the yews were found more deeply buried, their roots were twisted and out of their natural position, and were probably carried there by floods. Apparently then, the yew, unlike the common pine, never grew in any great depth of peat.
Large trunks of yew were formerly dug up on the shore of Magilligan in Co. Derry, between the rocks and the sea.[2] On the east side of Glenveigh, in Co. Donegal, thick logs are reported to be often found in the peat.[3]
In the Kew Museum there is a specimen of fossil yew, which was dug up in Hatfield Chase, near Thorne, Yorkshire, from under a bed of clay 6 feet in thickness; and another specimen is labelled, "Submarine Forest, Stogursey, Somersetshire."
Professor Seeley, F.R.S., in a very interesting letter, dated January 1904, says that he has seen "the broken stumps of yew trees standing as they grew by scores, possibly by hundreds, in Mildenhall Fen, about 1865, when the peat was entirely removed so as to prepare the land for corn. One tree sketched by Mr. Marshall, at that time Coroner for the Isle of Ely, from a section between Ely and Downham Market, showed the yew growing in sandy gravel with black flints. The roots were entirely in the gravel. Above the gravel is the 'Buttery Clay,' 2 feet 6 inches thick, into which the trunk of the tree extended vertically, rising about 1 foot into the Upper Peat, which was 4 feet 6 inches thick. This clay is marine, and is the delta mud of the Cam and the Ouse deposited on the Lower Peat and beyond it, where a depression of land admitted the sea over the Isle of Ely and killed the forests. A little part of the Scrobicularia Clay is 6 feet thick, and the peat above it 18 feet thick. The common trees in the peat there are pines and oaks. I have never seen the beech, and never heard of the lime. About the pine there is no doubt. It occurred in the forests of the Forest Bed of Norfolk, and at several localities in the peat of the fens, almost always on clay covered by peat."
In the present day the common yew is met with growing wild in most parts of Europe, from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, and from the Atlantic to the western provinces of Russia. It has only recently become extinct in the Azores. It also occurs in Algeria, Asia Minor, the Caucasus, North Persia, the Himalayas, and Burma. The yew also extends into the mountains of Sumatra, South Celebes, and the Philippines.[4]
