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preserved in churchyards, and venerable from long antiquity, had in many 

 instances waved their mournful foliage as native trees long before the 

 churches that now stand near them were erected (applause). 



Mr. Flavell Edmonds was next called upon by the Chairman, and 

 began by expressing the interest with which he had listened to the valuable 

 paper by the Rev. Mr. Woodhouse, to whom he felt that they were greatly 

 indebted. He thought, too, that he was only expressing the sentiments of 

 all present when he said that they had been much gratified by the presence 

 and the remarks of Mr. Bentham, to whom all botanists felt a debt of grati- 

 tude for his valuable works. As for his old friend Mr. Lees, of Worcester, 

 he had long been known and esteemed by them all for his excellent contribu- 

 tions to the study of the natural sciences generally. For his own part he 

 would say that, being no longer a young man, he felt so far released from the 

 law of modesty as to be at liberty to say that he ventured to differ from all 

 three of their friends (laughter). Those who knew his friend Lees and himself 

 would not be under any apprehension as to the results, aa they two had been 

 accustomed to fight when they met, but as they always fought without 

 quarrelling there was not much harm done on either side (laughter and 

 applause). He ventured to say, too, that with all his sense of their debt as 

 botanists to Mr. Bentham he felt at liberty to question one opinion which 

 that gentleman had advanced. He understood Mr. Bentham to hold that the 

 Yew is not indigenous, and that its presence in Herefordshire and other 

 districts may be accounted for either by the usefulness of the tree, or by the 

 ease with which the seeds may be sown by the birds. Now he disputed this 

 proposition. If they took the philological argument, it was dead against Mr. 

 Bentham's view. Nearly every tree which we know to have been introduced 

 to this country brought its name with it, which has been handed down to us, 

 more or less modified in its adoption into the English language, but still 

 perfectly recognisable. Thus the cerasus, the popuhis, the laurus, and the 

 buxus, survive as the cherry, the poplar, the laurel, and the box. The Yew, 

 however, retains its British name yio, equivalent to the Greek dti mv 

 and the Gothic aye, and meaning ever present or ever living ("hear, hear," 

 from Mr. Lees and Prof. GriflSths). The Saxons, too, called the tree by 

 the name iw, a word which, like the German cibe (quasi ewig kben), also 

 means always living. This identity of idea suggests the hypothesis that both 

 the Celtic and the Teutonic races found the tree in Germany and Britain 

 when they came, and were struck with its persistent greenness, when all 

 vegetation around it had put on the red-brown robe of autumn or stood bare 

 amid the frosts of winter. The Latin and Greek names of the Yew, on the 

 other hand, belong to a totally different class of ideas. The Latin word taxua 

 is not only diverse in its form and derivation from the British and German 

 words, but it is one which has arisen not from the appearance of the tree 

 but from the domestic uses to which, when cut down, the wood was applied. 

 Dice were made from it ; and the diminutive taxiltus signified a pile driven 



