64 



THE YEW. 



IN strong contrast with all other trees indigenous to the British islands, 

 stands, by reason of its poisonous foliage, the sombre yew. Were not 

 a single example of deleterious properties to exist among our trees, it 

 would at least be in exception to the remarkable and significant rule 

 that everything in nature shall have its dreary side. Thank God, it is 

 left to OUT own option to turn from the darkness to the light, and to 

 shelter below branches that are not only innocent but liberal. Who 

 would expect that among grasses, the sweet pasture of innumerable 

 kine, and in their larger forms, the source of corn, there is yet one to 

 be found with the taint of poison in it ; and that abreast of the lilies 

 there is a flower freighted with death ? Such, however, is the fact, and 

 darnel and colchicum are but illustrations and prefigurements, in their 

 respective provinces, of the mournful truth that comes out so strongly 

 in the consideration of the yew. Not that the berries are poisonous, 

 for these, though viscid, and with no peculiarly fine flavour to recom- 

 mend them, may be eaten with impunity ; it is in the leaves that the 

 hurtful juices are contained, after the same manner as in the laurel, the 

 little plums produced by which are innocuous, though extract prepared 

 from the leaves is speedily fatal. Probably it is in some measure from 

 this poisonous quality that the yew has been so often associated with 

 death and churchyards ; 



Cheerless, unsocial plant, that loves to dwell 

 Midst skulls and coffins, epitaphs and tombs. 



Remember, however, that it is man who has placed it in such localities. 

 Nature gives the yew a very different abiding-place from the cemetery, 

 and rightly viewed and understood, perhaps the yew may prove after 

 all, notwithstanding its possession of deadly sap, to be a tree that should 

 contribute ideas rather of cheerfulness than of mourning. Upon rugged 

 limestone scars and cliffs, where nothing else, save a little ivy, can 

 establish anchorage, the yew is often seen clinging, as if bound to the 

 ^rock with clamps of iron. Well-nigh flattened against the perpendicular 

 face of the stone, and with the merest ledge or crevice for its feet, it 



