OF SELBORNE 271 



men, and began to want more conveniences ; when they 

 flung a floor across, and, by partitions, divided the space 

 into chambers. In this hall we remember a date, some 

 time in the reign of Elizabeth ; it was over the door that 

 leads to the stairs. 



Behind the house is a garden of an irregular shape, but 

 well laid out; whose terrace commands so romantic and 

 picturesque a prospect, that the first master in landscape 

 might contemplate it with pleasure, and deem it an object 

 well worthy of his pencil. 



LETTER V 



IN the church-yard of this village is a yew-tree, whose 

 aspect bespeaks it to be of a great age : it seems to have 

 seen several centuries, and is probably coeval with the 

 church, and therefore may be deemed an antiquity : the 

 body is squat, short, and thick, and measures twenty-three 

 feet in the girth, supporting an head of suitable extent to 

 its bulk. This is a male tree, which in the spring sheds 

 clouds of dust, and fills the atmosphere around with its 

 farina. 



As far as we have been able to observe, the males of 

 this species become much larger than the females ; and it 

 has so fallen out that most of the yew-trees in the church- 

 yards of this neighbourhood 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 incon- 



