ON THE CHARACTERISTICS OF TREES. 257 



shoulders to range in the " rank and file" line that some capability 

 Brown has marked out for it — but how different its independent 

 aspect on the rocky strata of Ankerdine hill, in Worcestershire, 

 or like an hoary Druid, shaking its tresses over the foaming 

 cataracts of Pont-nedd-Vechan, Glamorganshire. The yew, 

 subjected to the metempsychosis of a Dutch gardener, with out- 

 stretched wing, or stiff tasseled crest, is unsightly enough to the 

 eye of taste ; but seen in its native solitudes, clustering up the 

 sides of a bare hill, or encamped with its horny tortuous roots 

 upon the edge of a steep precipice, its funereal plume waves 

 there in unison with the rough rocks around. Those who have 

 seen the yew on the sides of theWrekin, and adjacent Lime-kiln 

 Woods, or where, overshadowing the streams that murmur from 

 their defiles, clustered with ivy, it throws the deepest possible 

 obscurity of shade upon noon's fervid glare ; or those who have 

 paused, as I have, to mark its old mossy clumps, shrouding in 

 early spring the brook that patters down the rocks of Areley, on 

 whose black basaltic height the Roman eagles have stooped, will 

 duly estimate the yew as a British tree,* and admit its pictorial 

 effect in its native habitat. Wordsworth has well described the 

 appearance of the yew in Cumberland — 



" There is a yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale, 

 Which to this day stands single in the midst 

 Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore, 

 Not loth to furnish weapons in the hands 

 Of Umfreville, or Percy, ere they marched 

 To Scotland's heaths, or those that crossed the sea, 

 And drew their sounding bows at Agincourt, 

 Perhaps at earlier Cressy, or Poictiers. 

 Of vast circumference and gloom profound, 

 This solitary yew ! — a living thing 

 Produced too slowly ever to decay ; 

 Of form and aspect too magnificent 

 To be destroyed." 



England is distinguished by her park-like scenery, and nothing 

 is more characteristic of an English nobleman or gentleman's 

 mansion, than the "old patrician trees" that surround it, and give 

 only an indistinct and imperfect view of the towers and wreathed 

 chimneys rising above them. A long avenue of trees, forming a 

 natural arch overhead, if the vegetable columns have sufficient 

 room to extend themselves, forms a majestic object to gaze down, 

 especially when a picturesque building in dim perspective forms 

 a vista to the scene. In this case, however, the trees must be all 



* In Loudon's " Arboretum Britannicum," recently published, a doubt is 

 raised on the authority of Daines Barrington, as to the yew's being an indigenous 

 tree. Those who have rambled over the woods and hills of Worcestershire and 

 Herefordshire, where hundreds may be seen in every stage of growth, can entertain 

 no more doubt on the subject than they would as to the bramble's being a native. 

 At the western base of the Herefordshire Beacon, beyond Little Malvern, some 

 very fine old trees occur, and numerous others are dispersed in the woods. 



