786 MODIFICATIONS OF ASPECTS OF ORGANIC NATURE 



But when the invention of gunpowder and the application of 

 it to the science and art of projectiles ' put me a caliver into 

 Wart's hands,' the principal raison d'etre of the yew-tree was 

 destroyed. A man who drew a good bow, even if he drew it at 

 a venture, had needs have ' the limbs, the thews, the stature, bulk, 

 and big assemblage' of the men who won the battles of Agincourt, 

 of 'Cressy red and fell Poitiers;' and if he were to put his arrows 

 into the clout, he had needs have a steady and well co-ordinated eye, 

 in addition to well co-ordinated and strong arms, to be effective. 

 Such men were sent on many a campaign from England ; and for 

 the commencement of such campaigns, before the hardships of war 

 had impaired the soldier's condition, no more efficient man- slaying 

 machines could, when fair stock was taken of the relative deadli- 

 ness of the available weapons, have been conceived of, till the rifled 

 musket was discovered. But even English archers were liable to 

 the influence of short rations, hard work, and weather; and as 

 campaigns were not always settled in a few weeks, the firelock — 

 a weapon which Feeble and Wart, even if they were not their 

 * craft's masters,' could, under the supervision of that admirably 

 qualified musketry instructor ' Master Corporate ' Bardolph, learn 

 in a few weeks to use with as much efiect as the most stalwart 

 of tournament champions — displaced the bow and arrow, though 

 not entirely till after the wars of the Boses. This displacement 

 seems to have entailed the disappearance from many and many 

 a locality of lines and avenues of yew-trees, of which here and there 

 we still have a few representatives left us, and which, in such places 

 as the combes in chalk districts, form in the way of contrast, and 

 indeed also intrinsically, such a pleasant and interesting feature of 

 the landscape ^. 



Of the vastness of the change which the introduction of the 

 common elm (Ulmus campestris) into Britain has produced in the 

 landscape, any one who will count and compute the numbers of 

 the trees visible in any one of our midland counties at one view 



^ Having above quoted Mr. Hasted to his disadvantage, I wish to make some 

 compensation to his memory by here quoting a sentence of his with which I entirely 

 agree, but which I had not read when I wrote as I have done in the text, relatively 

 to the yew. It is the concluding sentence of the already quoted paper in the ' Philo- 

 sophical Transactions ' of 1771, and runs thus : ' Whoever has been much acquainted 

 with the woods and tracts of ground lying on our chalky hills will surely never 

 contend that the yew is not the indigenous growth of this country.' 



