272 THE ANTIQUITIES 



venience 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 of 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. An 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 an heap from browzing a little 

 on an 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, that yew-trees stand for twenty years or more 

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

 time or other cattle, either from wantonness when full, or 

 from hunger when empty (from both which circumstances 

 we have seen them perish), will be meddling, to their 

 certain destruction ; the yew seems to be a very improper 

 tree for a pasture-field. 



Antiquaries seem much at a loss to determine at what 

 period this tree first obtained a place in church-yards. A 

 statute passed a.d. 1307 and 35 Edward I. the title of 

 which is " Ne rector arbores in cemeterio prosternat." 



