250 TAXACEiE 



THE YEW 



(Of the natural order CONIFERiE, of the 



FAMILY TAXACE^, OF THE TRIBE TAXINEiE, 

 OF THE SUB-TRIBE TAXE^) 



Like the black and melancholy Yew Tree, 



Dost think to root thyself in dead men's graves, 



And yet to prosper ? 



T. Webster, The White Devil, a.d. 1612. 



" The Vine loves the hills, the Yew tree the north 

 wind and the cold " {Bacchus amat colles, Aquilonem 

 et frigora Taxi), at least that is how Bohn's Classical 

 Library — better known to scholars as the Virgil 

 crib — translates it, but iEolus, of wind-bag fame, 

 seems to have reckoned Aquilo as one of his parti- 

 cularly boisterous products that hailed from the 

 west. 



So wrote Virgil i,945 years ago, at a golden age 

 when " song was great," and in the close companion- 

 ship of the kindred spirits of Horace and Maecenas. 

 What sage advice you offered us, illustrious poet, in 

 those schoolboy days of our instruction ! Had we 

 been taught to grasp your meanings, rather than 

 stutteringly to attempt a construe of your verses, 

 or write out your lines for punishment, what an 

 agricultural instruction might we not have imbibed 1 

 You read us lectures therein on the growing of crops, 

 the treatment of soil, the planting and grafting of 

 trees, the breeding of animals, and last and least, 

 the ways of bees. Had we been allowed to investigate 

 the drifts of your reasonings from those forbidden 

 translations, to which — in spite of your rules to the 

 contrary, learned masters of classical lore — ^we 

 always contrived access, what experiences might we 

 not have accumulated in the culture of our lands 

 and the feeding of our flocks and herds ! 



