1296 TAXUS. [CLASS XXII. ORDER VIL. 
this wood. For millwright work, flood gates, and other wood works 
in trying and exposed situations, it is much esteemed ; and formerly, 
before the invention of gunpowder, the Yew was one of our most im- 
portant trees as furnishing our yeomen with bows. Their skill in the 
use of the long bow, the most important weapon known in the wars 
of our early Sovereigns, was the proud distinction of English yeomen. 
So great was the demand for this wood in these times of archery, that 
our native trees could not supply the demand, and so important was 
its use that various laws concerning it were enacted from the time of 
Edward the Fourth to that of Queen Elizabeth. It was imported 
from abroad in considerable quantities, and it is said that every ship 
trading to Venice was obliged to bring ten bow-staves along with 
every butt of malmsey wine, and it is the opinion of some persons that 
the great demand for the wood at that period was the reason the 
Yew was so often planted in Church-yards, This is not, however, 
very likely to have been the case, but rather, as Ray says, our 
ancestors planted the Yew in Church-yards because it was an ever- 
green tree, as a symbol of that immortality which they hoped and 
expected for the persons there deposited. 
“Now from yon black and funeral yew, 
That baths the charnel house with dew. 
Methinks I hear a voice begin; 
(Ye ravens, cease your croaking din, 
Ye tolling clocks, no time resound, 
O’er the long lake and midnight ground !) 
It sends a peal of hollow groans, 
Thus speaking from among the bones.” 
Parnell. 
It was a practice formerly observed, and is so still, in some parts 
of Ireland and Wales, to carry twigs of this and other evergreens, 
&e., to funerals, by the mourners, and afterwards throw them into the 
grave with the coffin. 
“ Throw by the lily, daffodil, and rose, 
Wreaths of black yew, and willow pale compose, 
With baleful hemlock, deadly night-shade dress’d, 
Such chaplets as may witness thine unrest, 
If ought can witness. O ye shepherds tell, 
When I am dead, no shepherd loyed so well!” 
A. Philips. 
The Yew tree, when allowed to grow in its natural shape, and ad- 
vanced to a good old age, is one of our handsomest evergreens; from, 
however, its being one of the most patient trees, it bears clipping and 
torturing perhaps more than any other, and when the fashion- 
able taste was to have long formal hedges, and trees cut into the 
form of.men, animals, &c., the Yew was the most frequently em- 
he 
