126 THE YEW. 



scale, the leaflets of the maiden-hair fern ! No one 

 examining the leaves of this remarkable tree, the 

 Salisburia, could suppose otherwise than that they 

 belonged to a fern; no one looking at the substan- 

 tial 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 incon- 

 spicuous in the extreme. They come out early in 

 spring, usually about March, and are so much hid- 

 den by the foliage as to be overlooked except by 

 the curious interrogator. They are difficult, more- 

 over, of dissection, and the two sexes, male and 

 female, are produced upon different trees. Hence 

 it is only upon certain individuals, or those which 

 develop 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 

 receptacle is succulent and scarlet. That famous 

 fruit of Australia which is described by lovers of 

 the marvellous and by the ignorant as " a cherry 

 with its stone upon the outside," is very nearly the 

 same thing as the yew-tree berry, only produced by 

 a different tree, and with the seed more protruded 

 from the cup. Botanists call it Exoccvrpus. 



The slow growth of the yew, being a part of its 

 life-history, belongs, like the flowers, to the botani- 

 cal idea of the plant. To this slowness of growth 

 are chiefly owing the hardness and the smoothness 



