334 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 



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 prevail- 

 ing 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 inconvenience from this food, yet milch-sows often 

 died after such a repast : a circumstance that can be accounted 

 for only by supposing that the latter, being much exhausted and 

 hungry, devoured a larger quantity. 



While mention is making of the bad effects of yew-berries, it 

 may be proper to remind the unwary, that the twigs and leaves 

 of yew, though eaten in a very small quantity, are certain death 

 to horses and cows, and that in a few minutes. A horse tied 

 to a yew-hedge, or to a faggot-stack of dead yew, shall be found 

 dead before the owner can be aware that any danger is at hand : 

 and the writer has been several times a sorrowful witness to 

 losses of this kind among his friends ; and in the island of Ely 

 had once the mortification to see nine young steers or bullocks 

 of his own all lying dead in a heap from browzing a little on a 

 hedge of yew in an old garden into which they had broken in 

 snowy weather. Even the clippings of a yew-hedge have de- 

 stroyed a whole dairy of cows when thrown inadvertently into a 

 yard. And yet sheep and turkies, and, as park-keepers say, 

 deer, will crop these trees with impunity. 



Some intelligent persons assert that the branches of yew, while 

 green, are not noxious ; and that they will kill only when dead 

 and withered, by lacerating the stomach : but to this assertion 



