250 THE ANTIQUITIES 



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 it's bulk. This is a male tree, 

 which in the spring sheds clouds of dust, and fills the atmosphere 

 around with it's 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 churchyards 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 

 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, lit 

 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. An 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 an heap from browzing a little on an hedge of 



