ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 303 



that most of the yew-trees in the churchyards of this neighbour- 

 hood are males : but this must have been matter of mere accident, 

 since men, when they first planted yews, little dreamed that there 

 were sexes in trees. 



In a yard, in the midst of the street, till very lately grew a 

 middle-sized female tree of the same species, which commonly 

 bore great crops of berries. By the high winds usually prevailing 

 about the autumnal equinox, these berries, then ripe, were blown 

 down into the road, where the hogs ate them. And it was very 

 remarkable, that, though barrow-hogs and young sows found no 

 inconvenience from this food, yet milch-sows often died after 

 such a repast : a circumstance that can be accounted for only by 

 supposing that the latter, being much exhausted and hungry, 

 devoured a larger quantity. 



While mention is making of the bad effects ot yew-berries, it 

 may be proper to remind the unwary that the twigs and leaves of 

 yew, though eaten in a very small quantity, are certain death to 

 horses and cows, and that in a few minutes. A horse tied to a 

 yew-hedge, or to a faggot-stack of dead yew, shall be found dead 

 before the owner can be aware that any danger is at hand ; and 

 the writer has been several times a sorrowful witness to losses of 

 this kind among his friends ; and in the island of Ely had once 

 the mortification to see nine young steers or bullocks of his own 

 all lying dead in a heap from browsing a little on a hedge of yew 

 in an old garden, into which they had broken in snowy weather. 

 Even the clippings of a yew hedge have destroyed a whole dairy 

 of cows when thrown inadvertently into a yard. And yet sheep 

 and turkeys, and, as park-keepers say, deer will crop these trees 

 with impunity. 



Some intelligent persons assert that the branches of yew, while 

 green, are not noxious ; and that they will kill only when dead and 

 withered, by lacerating the stomach ; but to . this assertion we 

 cannot by any means assent, because, among the number of cattle 

 that we have known fall victims to this deadly food, not one has 

 been found, when it was opened, but had a lump of green yew in 

 its paunch. True it is, "hat yew-trees stand for twenty years or 

 more in a field, and no bad consequences ensue ; but at some 



