THE YEW AND ITS VAKIETIES. 293 



Sweden and Norway, as far as latitude 60° N., but it is very 

 rare in Russia, a circumstance accounted for by the level nature 

 of the country. It is also found in Algeria, on Mount Taurus 

 in Cilicia, in Armenia, and as far eastwards as the Eiver Amour.* 

 On the Himalayas, "it occurs as high as 10,000 feet, and spreads 

 east from Kashmir to Assam and the Khasia -hills; and the Japan, 

 Philippine Islands, Mexican and other North American Tews belong 

 to the same widely diffused species. In the Khasia, its most 

 southern limit, it is found as low as 5,000 feet."t It is frequent 

 in Canada and the north-east States, and locally met with in 

 Florida, California, and Oregon. J 



The Yew is of geological antiquity; it formed part of the forests 

 of Britain at a period long anterior to historic times. It is found 

 among the buried trees on the Norfolk coast, near Cromer. § It also 

 " crops up in another forest, now beneath the Bristol Channel, in 

 which, if there be any truth in bones, the elephant, rhinoceros, and 

 beaver roamed." || 



Taxus, the Latin name of the Yew, from the Greek tcl^oq (taxos), 

 which, from rao-o-w (tasso) " to arrange," probably in reference to the 

 two rowed or distichous arrangement of the leaves, or probably from 

 rolov (toxon) "a bow," the wood being used in ancient times for 

 making bows. 



Yew, or Yeugh. In Chaucer and other old authors, ewe; in 

 Aubrey's Wilts, eugh ; Anglo Saxon, iw ; German, eibe ; Spanish, iva 

 and tejo ; French, if ; Welsh, yw ; Media Latin, ivus, iva, or ua, 

 " an abbreviation of ajuga, which was a misspelling of abiga, a plant 

 mentioned by Pliny as being the same as x a H- al7rtTv e (chamaipitus) so 

 called from its causing abortion. These names of the Yew we find so 

 inseparably mixed up with others that mean Ivy, that dissimilar as 

 are the two plants there can be . no doubt that their names are, in 

 their origin, identical. How they came to be attached to these trees, 

 the Yew and the Ivy, is the difficulty." (Trior, Popular Names of 

 British Plants). 



In the . following synoptic table the varieties placed under Taxus 

 baccata originated in Great Britain, or in continental nurseries. 



* De Candolle's Prod., xvi., p. 500. 



t Sir J. D. Hooker's Himalayan Journals, vol. ii., p. 25. 



+ Dr. Asa Gray considers the Canadian Yew to belong to the same species as the Old World 

 Yews ; the very local one in Florida is slightly different ; that of California and Oregon differs 

 a very little more. Address to American Association of Science, 1872. 



§ Dr. Ramsay, Physical Geology of Great Britain, p. 184. 



II H. Evershed in Gardeners' Chronicle, 1876, vol. vi., p. 99. 



