48 THE YEW 



of independence ; but it is not recorded that they ever 

 decided the fortune of a stricken field, as English 

 archers often did. It is said that the Scots persisted 

 in drawing the arrow notch to what ladies' tailors call 

 ' the lower chest/ instead of to the shoulder or cheek. 

 For military purposes, the most precious tree to the 

 Scots was the ash, for it furnished staves for those 

 terrible pikes which wrought such havoc among the 

 English chivalry and heavily-equipped men-at-arms at 

 Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn. 



So much, perhaps far too much, for the yew histori- 

 cally ; to the botanist it is peculiarly interesting as a 

 growth of very archaic type. It used to be classed 

 among the Coniferce, to which its foliage indicates its 

 close affinity; but when the pines and firs took to 

 protecting their seeds with imbricated cones, the more 

 conservative yew was content to go on with its charac- 

 teristic drupes, which have been recovered from the 

 earliest deposits of the carboniferous age ; and the yews 

 are now reckoned as forming a separate order of their 

 own Taxacece. Many and many an aeon must have 

 passed before fruits exactly similar were shed in the 

 Pliocene beds of Norfolk, where they are found among 

 bones of the extinct elephant, four kinds of bear, and 

 rhinoceros. Unlike some of its contemporaries which 

 have survived the gingko or maidenhair tree, for in- 

 stance, and the umbrella pine (Sciadopytis) the race of 

 yews shows no failure of vigour. Give it a chance by 

 excluding browsers and nibblers, and it will scatter its 

 seeds through the agency of birds and raise a numerous 

 progeny. Moreover, although the popular local tradi- 



