VII 



TAXACE.E 



(Of the natural order CONIFER^E, of the 

 family taxaceie, of the tribes (l) salis- 

 BURINEiE, AND (2) TAXINE^) 



For never knew that swarthy grove 

 The verdant hue that fairies love. 



Sir W. Scott. 



To dissociate at a glance all these long-leaved sable 

 kinsmen of our well-known Yew ma}^, owing to the 

 rarity of their presence and the still greater rarity 

 of the presence of any fruit upon them, be regarded 

 as a task of no mean difficulty, but it is a task that 

 pales into insignificance before an attempt to master 

 all the Taxad terms in use — ^Taxaceae, Taxineae, 

 Taxeae, Taxodinae, Taxodium. When confronted 

 wuth them you experience a maddening desire, once 

 and for all, to disengage yourself from the influence 

 of words and the bondage of botany. When all their 

 precise applications and significances have been 

 conquered, and committed to the tablets of an un- 

 forgetting memory, a feat more worthy of a Senior 

 Wrangler than a tree-student rambler has been 

 achieved. 



All these unpromoted rank and file of the Yew 

 family — to wit, the Cephalotaxi, Torreyas, Podo- 

 carps, Prumnopitys, Saxegothea — have their dis- 

 tinguishing leaf, as well as their still more distinguish- 

 ing fruit differences. Where the difficulty comes in, 



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