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There they seem to be contemporaneous with some of the very oldest 

 ehurches, and planted to correspond with the plan of the building. I men- 

 tion this circumstance, because an eminent honorary member of ours a short 

 time since started the notion that, instead of the trees being i)lanted to 

 correspond with the church, the church was placed to correspond with the 

 trees. Now I know at least two Norman churches which have four Yew trees 

 planted at nearly regular distances from the four corners of the building, 

 N.E., S.E , N.AV., S. W. Such a coincidence surely cannot be accidental, and 

 it would be wotderful indeed if four indigenous and self-sown trees placed 

 themselves with such precision as to guide the afbhitect. 



Let us suppose the chiirch built, why should not the Yew trees be 

 planted for ornament ? Our forefathers had no such prejudice against the 

 Yew as the Bomans had ; they had no variety of evergreens to choose from ; 

 they had, in fact, no other evergreen that could be called a tree : for the 

 Scotch fir never seems to have been indigenous in the South ; the box, 

 the holly, and the juniper, were all too small to give shelter, though they 

 did aid, and were used to aid, in giving ornament. "We are so accustomed to 

 pines and firs, cypresses and cedars, and arbor- vitses, laurels and bays, and all 

 the other multitude of evergreens, which have added so immensely to the 

 resources of our country as well as to the beauty of our gardens, that we 

 are apt to forget that our forefathers had none of these ; that the best known 

 and most widely spread of them are younger than an oak or a yew of 300, or 

 even 200 years old. 



The Yew was an ornament not only to the churchyard, but to the church 

 itself. Its foliage, together with that of the box, was as much appropriated 

 to Easter as holly and ivy were to Christmas : and in some old churches in 

 this county the custom still lingers on, or did till lately, of decking the 

 church at Easter with sprigs of yew and box. It is worth noting that both 

 those trees are then in flower, so that the appropriateness of the emblem to 

 tho season is very striking. 



It is said that boughs of Yew were formerly employed in the services of 

 the day on Palm Sunday, instead of real palms. If this were so, it is 

 another reason why the tree should be planted near the church. 



It may be reasonably supposed that Yew trees were formerly much 

 more numerous in this county than they are at present, and that the reason 

 why the oldest yews are now found in churchyards is that that was the only 

 place where they were spared. Everywhere else yew trees fell before the wood- 

 man's axe. The demand for yew wood for bows was so great, and lasted so 

 long, that we may be certain eveiy corner of the country was ransacked for the 

 : precious material — for precious it was. English archers turned the scale in 

 many a well-fought field : and the Yew was the only wood of which their bows 

 were made. An extensive trade in yew soon sprang up, and was carried oa 



