T. baccata 



appearance has not tended to improve matters. 

 As specimens of these, the following are typical. 

 R. Turner remarks that " if the Yew be set in a 

 place subject to poysonous vapours, the very 

 branches will draw and imbibe them, hence it is 

 conceived that the judicious in former times 

 planted it in churchyards on the west side, 

 because those places, being fuller of putrefaction 

 and gross oleaginous vapours exhaled out of the 

 graves by the setting sun, and sometimes drawn 

 by those meteors called ignes fatui, divers have 

 been frightened, supposing some dead bodies to 

 walk, etc." The questionable honour of being 

 the most ill-omened tree in Britain must be 

 ascribed to the Yew, if we are to judge by 

 the old superstition, which credits it with liking 

 better to lead a solitary life amidst the dead 

 and sending down its roots to prey on and in- 

 vigorate itself on dead bodies, rather than be 

 sociable with its neighbours and obtain its nutri- 

 ment in the manner befitting well principled trees. 

 This superstition doubtless gave Lord Tennyson 

 the idea for the following lines which occur in 

 In Memoriam : 



" Old Yew, which graspest at the stones 

 That name the underlying dead, 

 Thy fibres net the dreamless head, 

 Thy roots are wrapt about the bones." 



Blair, in The Grave, also refers to the unsocial 

 L 163 



