THE TEW AND ITS VARIETIES. 301 



of a bird or a quadruped ; the peacock * appearing to have been 

 popular with the yeomanry, and the fox and greyhound with the inn- 

 keepers. 



The Yew sports into many varieties and sub-varieties, from which 

 those given in the synoptic table have been selected as being useful 

 and distinct ornamental kinds, and including some valuable additions 

 to the resources of the gardener and landscape planter. 



The specific name baccata, "furnished with berries," is expressive of 

 the prolific character of the fruit-bearing Yews. 



Taxus baccata aurea has the margins and tips of the leaves, 

 and also the stems of the terminal branchlets, a rich golden-yellow 

 during the growing season. It is one of the most useful and 

 attractive of variegated shrubs. 



Taxus baccata Dovastonii. — A remarkable variety, with longer 

 leaves of deeper green than the common form, and with pendulous 

 branchlets. It is a suitable plant for cemeteries, and when grown 

 as a standard, formed by grafting it on one of the upright varieties, 

 it supplies a quaint subject for contrast in the garden. 



The origin of the Dovaston Yew is thus given by Loudon t — " The 

 Westfelton Yew stands in the grounds of J. F. M. Dovaston, Esq., of 

 Westfelton, near Shrewsbury, and the following account has been sent 

 to us by that gentleman : ' About sixty years ago (now over a hundred) 

 my father, John Dovaston, a man without education, but of unwearied 

 industry and ingenuity, had, with his own hands, sunk a well and 

 constructed and placed a pump in it, and the soil being light and 

 sandy, it constantly fell in. He secured it with wooden boards, but 

 perceiving their speedy decay, he planted near the well ' a Yew tree, 

 which he bought of a cobbler for sixpence, rightly judging that the 

 fibrous and matting tendency of the Yew roots would hold up the 

 soil They did so, and independently of its utility, the Yew grew into 

 a tree of extraordinary and striking beauty, spreading horizontally all 

 round, with a single aspiring leader to a great height, each branch in 

 every direction dangling in tressy verdure downwards, the lowest one's 

 to the very ground, pendulous and playful as the most graceful birch 

 or willow, and visibly obedient to the feeblest breath of air. Though 

 a male tree, it has one branch self-productive, and profuse of berries, 

 from which I have raised several plants in the hope that they may 

 inherit some of the beauty ,of their parent.'" This beautiful tree is 



* The climbing street, the mill, the leafy lane, 

 The peacock Yew tree, and the lonely Hall. 



Tennyson's Enoch Arden, 

 t Arb. et Frut., p. 2082, 



