DAYS OF THE EVERGREEN 271 



seed is half hidden in a rosy gelatinous cup. This red jelly 

 is covered with a delicate bloom, like a plum, and is sweet 

 and rather pleasant to the taste. It is one of the fruits of 

 which missel-thrushes are exceedingly fond. The enclosed 

 seed contains the same alkaloid poison found in the leaves, 

 so that yew-berries have been prudently included among 

 poisonous berries in popular estimation, though the outer 

 pulp is harmless enough. The poisonous effect of the leaves 

 on horses, cattle and sheep is very erratic, and is not fully 

 understood. Sometimes the leaves prove very fatal, while 

 at other times the animals eat them without harm. It has 

 sometimes been held that cattle only suffer from eating the 

 leaves when they have been cut, and are withered and 

 prickly ; and that the fatal effect is not due to chemical 

 poisoning, but to mechanical irritation. But the effects seem 

 just as uncertain in the case of cut leaves. The evidence 

 tends generally to show that animals may often gnaw small 

 quantities of the foliage of yews growing just within their 

 reach without harm, but that the mischief follows a heavy 

 gorge, when clippings or cut boughs are left in their field, 

 or they break their way into a wood or garden where there 

 are abundant bushes or low boughs. 



Ivy, like holly, gains a new brilliance of verdure in the 

 subdued winter landscapes. When the leaves have fallen, 

 the massive ivy bushes hanging in the heads of the hawthorns 

 and crab-apple trees, or clustering round the limbs of elm or 

 ash, gleam with a sober but vivid brightness among the bare 

 boughs above the carpet of withered leaves. Like mistletoe, 

 ivy shows the true evergreen spirit by bearing its berries at 

 midwinter ; and they form the favourite food of the wood- 

 pigeons in hard weather. On frosty days in December and 

 January there is the same heightening of colour in the blue 

 wings of the pigeons clapping out at the ring of our feet as in 

 T 



