200 CONIFERS 



dwelling probably led to some superstitious practices with the plant in later 

 days, as we infer from occasional mention by the poets. Thus, in Bishop 

 Hall's Satires, we find an allusion of this nature : — 



" And with glasse stills, and sticks of Juniper, 

 Raise the black spright that burns not with the fire :" 



while various ceremonies connected with the burning of this wood in some 

 parts of Scotland, during the prevalence of an epidemic, have led to the 

 inference that this old practice was a remnant of a Druidical superstition. 

 The wood is capable of bearing a high polish, and is used by turners in 

 making many small articles. 



3. Yew {Tdxus). 



Common Yew (T. haccdia). — Leaves crowded, linear, evergreen ; flower's 

 sessile, axillary. One never thinks of a Yew-tree, with its dark-green 

 foliage, without thinking, too, of its best accompaniment — some village 

 church, by whose portal, perhaps, it has stood for centuries, seeming yet to 

 be the "challenger of time." As in many cases it was green ere those grey 

 walls or crumbling buttresses were reared, so too it will long survive the 

 edifice which it now adorns, and utter to coming generations the silent 

 lessons which it preaches to ours. So old is its aspect, that we can hardly 

 imagine that it was ever young ; and, venerable and evergreen, we feel how 

 well fitted it is for a symbol of immortality ; and, sombre as it is, how well 

 Dryden's epithet of the " Mourner Yew " befits the old tree. 



The fact that the Christian church was often reared, like that of St. Paul 

 in London, on the site of an ancient heathen temple, must account for the 

 great age of some of our old churchyard Yews. Many of them are un- 

 doubtedly older than the Conquest ; and that celebrated old Yew of Bra- 

 bourne, in Kent, now so long dead that no living inhabitant of the village 

 saw its fall or knows its history — that ancient tree is believed to have been 

 three thousand years old, and to have lived in those days when the shepherds 

 listened to the glorious anthem sung by angels, "Grlory to God in the 

 highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." It must, however, be 

 confessed that the means by which some botanists have believed it possible 

 to ascertain the age of the Yew are not universally admitted among scientific 

 men. Evelyn described this tree, in his time, as fifty-eight feet eleven inches 

 in circumference, having, as he says, measured it himself. Mr. Bowman, 

 who wrote, some years since, in the Magazine of Natural History, an interest- 

 ino- paper on " The Longevity of the Yew, and its Connexion with Church- 

 yards," thinks it probable that our pagan ancestors, on their first arrival 

 here, considered the Yew as the best substitute for the cypress in decking 

 the graves ; and this writer refers to some lines of a very ancient Walsh bard, 

 which are thus translated by Dr. Owen Pugh : " The Minster of Esgor and 

 that of Henllan, of celebrity for sheltering Yews." Hmllan signifies "an 

 old grove," thus proving that its church stood where Druidical worship had 

 been performed. 



When Augustine was sent by Gregory the Great to preach Christianity 

 in Britain, he was enjoined to purify, and not to destroy, the temples of 



