io8 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



ing reference may be made to it here. 

 ** Thousands see in cathedral aisles," he says, 

 **the reproduction in stone of the pine-forest 

 or the beech-wood. Standing before an 

 ancient yew they may see whence came the 

 idea for those clustered columns. They actu- 

 ally exist in the bole of the yew, which presents 

 the appearance not of a single trunk, but of 

 several trunks that have coalesced." Unfor- 

 tunately for this theory, our Gothic architecture 

 has been evolved, little by little, and, as to its 

 structure, with a severely utilitarian purpose, 

 from earlier styles of building hardly at all 

 suggestive of the forest-glade — but more of 

 this hereafter. We may not be able to accept 

 the theory here advanced ; but, none the less, 

 we may rightly admire the clustered stems of 

 the yew-tree bole. 



Our third indigenous conifer is the juniper ; 

 it is rarely more than a few feet in height : a 

 shrub rather than a tree ; but, as Hamerton 

 says, wherever it occurs, ''it is valuable in the 

 landscape for its own special quality of green, 

 and for the texture and density of its peculiar 

 foliage ". 



Of exotic conifers the number now grown in 



