Taxus 117 



No tree has such a remarkable faculty of covering up wounds or injuries by the 

 growth of fresh wood from the outside ; and even after the main stem is completely 

 dead, fresh and entirely new stems may grow up around it and form a new tree 

 around the dead one. For this reason most of the yews of very large size are 

 mere shells, and even when no hollow can be seen from the outside, decay which 

 is often indicated by moisture running from holes in the trunk has set in. 



T.'.'ree very curious sections showing the way in which these trunks grow are 

 given by Lowe, pp. 78 and 79. 



The yew, though occurring wild far north, as in Norway, is not perfectly hardy, 

 and many instances are on record in which it has been injured or killed during severe 

 winters. It was affected in Cambridgeshire* and severely injured at Glasgow by the 

 severe frost of 183 7- 1838. In the winter of 1859- 1860 the young shoots of many 

 trees were killed at Burton-on-Trent.^ 



Many cultivated yews^ were killed by the frost of 1879- 1880 in Switzerland, 

 Rhineland, Hessia, Thuringia, etc. though in the same localities other native conifers 

 were not injured by the severe cold. Duhamel* states that in France the yew 

 suffered much damage from the great frosts of 1 709 ; and Malesherbes found several 

 killed by the frost of 1789. 



Poisonous Properties of the Yew 



The poisonous properties of the yew have been well known from the earliest 

 times, and the subject has been so carefully investigated in the Jourfial of the 

 Royal Agricultural Society of England, 1892, p. 698, by Messrs. E. P. Squarey, 

 Charles Whitehead, W. Carruthers, F.R.S., and Dr. Munro, and summarised by 

 Low in chapter x. of his work, that we need not do more than give a brief 

 r^sumd of the present state of our knowledge. Through the kindness of Sir 

 W. Thiselton Dyer, we have been able to peruse a file of the Board of 

 Agriculture entitled " Yew Poisoning," in which the subject has been further 

 discussed by that gentleman with whose opinions we are in complete accordance. 



The conclusions drawn by Dr. Munro, after careful study from a medical 

 point of view, are as follows : 



" Both male and female yew leaves contain an alkaloid. 



"This alkaloid in both cases appears to agree with the taxine of Hilger 

 and Brande. Taxine is probably the poison of the yew, but it is doubtful 

 whether it has ever been obtained in a pure state, and its physiological effects 

 have not been sufficiently studied. Other alkaloids are probably present in yew. 



" Taxine is present in fresh yew leaves as well as in those withered or 

 air-dried. It is also present in the seeds, but not in the fleshy part of the fruit. 



" The yew poison may be one of moderate virulence only, and may occur 

 in greater percentage in male than in female trees, or the percentage may vary 

 from tree to tree without distinction of sex, and this may explain the capricious 



' Lindley, Trans. Hort. Soc. 1842, ii. 225. ' Card. Chron. i860, p. 578. 



3 Kirchner, loc. eit. 62. < Traiti de Arbres, i. 302 (1755). 



