THE ROMANCE OF OUR TREES 



Very many Yew hedges and clipped trees were 

 swept away in the middle of the 18th century by the 

 celebrated landscape gardener, "Capability" Brown. 

 He dealt ruthlessly with all clipped hedges and 

 topiary work, but there appears to have been a nat- 

 ural rebound in the public mind with regard to Yew 

 hedges after the attacks of Addison and Pope and the 

 wholesale manner in which they were swept away to 

 make room for Brown's new style of landscape garden- 

 ing. The Yew is indeed one of the very best hedge 

 plants in temperate lands. It has been much used for 

 this purpose in England where many famous Yew 

 hedges from i o to 20 feet high and 9 to 1 2 feet through 

 may be seen. A Yew hedge is indeed an ornamental 

 adjunct to the flower garden and pleasure grounds 

 for which it not only forms an efficient screen but 

 often produces a picturesque effect. 



Though its geological antiquity does not compare 

 with that of the Ginkgo it is probably as ancient as 

 the Cedars. In early Tertiary times, when the ele- 

 phant and rhinoceros roamed through Britain, 

 Greenland, and the now Arctic regions of this con- 

 tinent, the Yew formed a common ingredient of 

 the forests of those lands. To-day the Yew is found 

 widespread in the temperate regions of the Northern 

 Hemisphere. The family likeness everywhere is very 

 strong, so strong in fact that many botanists con- 

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