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into the ground, for which the hardness of the wood, and its power of 

 resisting the actiou of the water, qualities which have been made available 

 by men in all ages, pointed out tlie yew-tree as specially adapted. The Greeks 

 being a more elegant-minded and less practical people than the Romans, gave 

 the Yew a name arising out of its use for purposes of adornment. The word 

 (T/it\nS (from afiai>), I adorn) is an allusion to the use of yew branches as 

 funereal decorations. The contrast is instructive in an ethnological point of 

 view, although he alluded to it merely as part of the argument that the 

 Yew is indigenous. Si)me words of four letters, and all of less than that 

 number, he had been accustomed to consider primitive words ; and if that 

 view were correct, the word pw, being composed of only two letters, was not 

 likely to have been formed in any but very early times. So far from the 

 Romans having introduced the Yew, he suspected that they found the tree 

 here when they came. The argument from analogy supports this view. It is 

 not denied that the Irish yew is indigenous to our neighbour island, and Mr. 

 Edmunds said he knew no reason why the other species should not be indi- 

 genous to this country, Then again, he argued that the proposition that 

 our yew-trees are the result of planting for use is not borne out by observation. 

 The Yew is abundant in places far from the dwellings of men, as well as in 

 their midst, but is chiefly to be found associated with their burial places. 

 Between bird-sown trees, of which the introduction is not proved, and those 

 which are indigenous, the speaker confessed himself unable to draw a distinc- 

 tion. He had found, however, the yew growing just outside the walls of 

 Roman cities, and on the slopes of Roman camps, where no doubt the dead 

 ■were buried— Magna Castra, the slopes of Credenhill, Acornbury, Dinedor, 

 &c., are examples— and the Greek name of the tree, as he had shown, 

 indicated the great antiquity of its connection with the rites of sepulture. 

 It was quite true, as their friend Lees had said, that an Act of Parliament 

 required merchants to import foreign yew-staves— four staves with every ton 

 of goods ; but he disputed their friend's inference that the English archer 

 gained his great victories with foreign yew-staves. The law as to importations 

 certainly showed that the home-grown supply of Yew was insufficient, but it 

 showed that home-grown yew was used. Then, too, it should be remem- 

 bered thit an Act of Henry VII. i-eqaited churchwardens to plant yew-trees in 

 all the chuich-yards, the preamble reciting as reasons for the enactment the 

 insufficiency of the supply of wood for bows, and the consequent neglect of 

 archery. No doubt many of the existing yew-trees in church-yards are the 

 result of that Act, but in many cases the size of the tree renders that view 

 inadmissible. For his own part, he fully subscribed to the doctrine of Mr, 

 Lees that inmost cases tha church had come to the Yew and not the Yew 

 ta the church. He put the case thus : The British word Llan meant originally 

 — as shown in the words Ber-Uan, corph-lan, &c. — an enclosure for any pur- 

 pose ; but the practice of taking possession of heathen sacred enclosures for 

 Christian churches gradually restricted the meaning of the word until it came 



