220 THE BEA UTIES OF BRITISH TREES. [Jan. 



making bows that the tree owes its Latin name of Taxus. Thus in 

 his earliest botanical work, Libdlus dc re licrharia (1538), Turner 

 writes : " Taxus an uhe tre unde liodie aj^ud nos fiunt arena ; " and 

 the poet Spenser, in 1590, speaks of it as — 



"The eugh, obedient to the bender's will." 

 It was to bows of yew that we mainly owed the victories of 

 Crecy and Poictiers ; Edward IV. enacted that every Englishman 

 should have such a bow of his own height ; and so peaceable a man 

 as Elizabeth's tutor, Eoger Ascham, as we see from his Toxopliilus 

 (1544), regretted the day when — - 



"England were but a fling 

 But for the eugh and the grey goose wing." 



Its position to the south, or more strictly south-west of the church, 

 must probably be accounted for by some such belief as that referred 

 to by Robert Turner in his Botanohgia (1664), as follows: — 



" The yew is hot and dry, having such attraction that if planted 

 near a place subject to poysonous vapours its very branches will 

 draw and imbibe them. For this reason it was planted in church- 

 yards, and commonly on the west side, which was at one time 

 considered full of putrefaction and gross oleaginous gasses exhaled 

 from the graves by the setting sun. These gasses or will-o'-the- 

 wasps, divers have seen, and believed them dead bodies walking 

 abroad. Wlreresoever it grows, it is both dangerous and deadly to 

 man and best ; the very lying under its brandies has been found 

 hurtful, yet the growing of it in churchyards is useful." 



This belief in the fatal effect of even sleeping under the boughs of 

 the yew dates from Galen and Dioscorides ; whilst Cassar records 

 the death of Catibulus, king of the Eburones, from drinking its 

 juice. Gerard, however, in his Rerhall (1597), rashly denies all 

 this, saying : " All which I boldly affirm as untrue, because I have 

 eaten my full of the berries and slept in the branches, not once, but 

 oft, without hurt." 



The facts would seem to be that the seeds themselves are 

 poisonous, but the fleshy pink cup, or " aril," as the botanists term 

 it, of which children are so fond, is harmless. As to the boughs 

 and leaves, it would seem that cattle can be gradually accustomed 

 to them when mixed with other food ; Init that, either when green, 

 or when cut and half-withered, the)' have been repeatedly fatal to 

 horses, oxen, sheep, and deer. Gilbert White was probably right 

 when he said that it was " either from wantonness when full, or 

 from hunger when empty," that the yew is eaten by them with fatal 

 consequences. Though the leaves are believed to act as a vermifuge, 

 they are likely to be equally fatal to children, the poison acting 

 either on tlie cerebro-spinal nerves, or directly on the heart. 



