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a soUtarij seed, pai'tly covered by a pulpy substance. Look at the 

 so-called berry of juniper. It consists of a few scales which 

 become ;?^s/;_y and close over the seeds. Look now at an ordinary 

 <;one, with, perhaps, scores of naked seeds, and the family tie 

 comes into view. It must be said, however, that while all botan- 

 ists call juniper a Conifer, not a few have placed the yew and its 

 near allies in a distinct order called Taxacege. Bentham and 

 Hooker, the distinguished authors of " Genera Plantarum," a work 

 which occupied many years in its production, includes the Taxads, 

 and arranged Conifers in six sections, //irfe of which are represented 

 in the Flora of Great Britain, each one by only one genus, and 

 each genus by only one species. The species naturally produced 

 liere are the Scotch pine [Pinus syUestris), the Juniper [Juniperus 

 communis), and the Yew [Taxus baccata). Of that Scotch pine 

 many thin2;s might be said. It is naturalized in the South of 

 England, but it belongs to Scotland, where it is still a feature, 

 though not nearly as much as it once was. It formerly abounded. 

 m Ireland too. It is rather plentiful in this neighborhood, pro- 

 ducing cones very freely. Juniper is interesting to the distiller of 

 gin. It is usually a low shrub, but sometimes a small tree, found 

 in many English counties. It did grow sparingly about here, but I 

 should not be sure of finding it now. Its na^me is traceable to 

 Latin words meaning " youth renewing," or "young producing, " 

 because of the evergreen character of the genus. And the yew 

 tree ! What associations it has. Did not English archers in the 

 olden time, fight and conquer with their bows of yew ? Did they 

 not continue to use the bow for a long time after the invention of 

 gunpowder, and was there not often a space of some two or three 

 liundred yards between the bowman and the mark whither his 

 arrow flew ? On other grounds, much interest centres in the 

 yew. It is not a light cheery-looking tree, but still a very long- 

 lived one, and it has long been planted, as its branches have been 

 carried, as an emblem of immortality. The words of Shakespeare 

 are fitting in this connection, 



" My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, 

 Oh prepare it. " 

 "The leaves of the yew are poisonous, but not so the scarlet so-called 

 berry. But few conifers were introduced into this country before 

 the sixteenth century, and many of those that adorn our parks and 

 plantations are of recent introduction. Only some fifty or sixty 

 years having passed since our landscape gardeners, in all parts of 

 the country, were on the look-out for those new trees and shrubs 

 which the bold enterprise of our fellow countrymen was making 

 known to them. The mammoth tree of California, now called 

 Sequoia gigantea, but still better known as Wellingtonia gigantea, and 



