THE YEW. 



converting symbols that are inherently suggestive of good into emblems 

 of what is only too familiar in its reality. 



Botanically considered, the yew holds a place in nature shared by 

 only a small company. Plain and palpable as are the great classes and 

 families into which plants are resolvable by men of science, every one 

 of them a solar system as it were, in miniature, certain grand ideas of 

 structure constituting centres round which minor ones are disposed 

 planet-wise, plain and palpable as are these great classes in regard to 

 their centres, and the mass of their elements, there are located upon 

 the frontiers of all, without exception, certain curious forms which give 

 a hand, so to speak, to either side. Just as whales link mammals to 

 fishes, living in the ocean, like sharks and dolphins, yet suckling their 

 offspring after the manner of female quadrupeds ; just as bats connect 

 mammals again with birds; and just as those comical little creatures, 

 the armadillos, connect, still once more, the mammalia with the reptilian 

 races; so among plants do certain strange organisms stand midway 

 between the especially great and obvious classes, and constitute the 

 bridges whereby all things are maintained as a unity. The Conifers, to 

 which the members of the yew-tree family stand as a kind of appendix, 

 have for one of their own ennobling functions this very duty of associating 

 forms otherwise unconnected. The stems, the branches, the style of 

 growth, the longevity, the succulent fruit, the beautiful timber of the 

 yew, link it at once, and with applause, to the foresters over which the 

 cedar presides, and which are to oaks and benches just what opulent 

 islands are to the continents they lie adjacent to; the flowers, on the 

 other hand, point a different way, and when we take that curious 

 Japanese member of the yew-tree group called the Sattsbteria, the leaves 

 are, on a great scale, the leaflets of the maiden-hair fern ! No one 

 examining the leaves of this remarkable tree could suppose otherwise 

 than that they belonged to a fern ; no one, looking at the substantial 

 woody boughs, could have a moment's doubt that the tree conformed, 

 so far, with the oak and walnut! The flowers of the yew itself are 

 inconspicuous in the extreme. They come out early in spring, usually 

 about March, and are so much hidden by the foliage as to be overlooked 

 by any except the curious interrogator. They are difficult, moreover, 

 of dissection, and the two sexes, male and female, are produced upon 

 different trees. Hence it is only upon certain individuals, or those 

 which develope female flowers, that the characteristic red berries are to 

 be discovered. In structure these pretty fruits are not very unlike the 

 acorn of the oak, only that instead of a hard and woody cup, the 



